THE CHIEF suspect in an armed post office raid in Co Sligo last week was buried yesterday after being found dead at the weekend.
The 23-year-old man from the west was found dead in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, last Saturday while gardaí were searching for him following a raid on Riverstown Post Office in Sligo.
He was buried yesterday and his family asked mourners to make donations to Aware, an organisation which helps to defeat depression.
The young man became the chief suspect when detectives matched discarded burned clothes with CCTV images of what he was wearing in another store shortly before the post office raid on Tuesday of last week.
The man who raided the post office escaped with €1,800 which he grabbed from staff while the only customer, a woman, was collecting her children’s allowance.
The robber, who threatened staff with a gun later identified as a fake when it was found 200km away, was believed to have been driven away by a woman.
Two women were arrested by gardaí last week about the Riverstown Post Office raid and later released. A file is being sent in relation to them to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
A senior Garda officer in the inquiry said: “He knew we were looking for him and he disappeared. We discovered that he later checked in last Thursday to a hotel in Temple Bar in Dublin.
“When he was found . . . in the Phoenix Park on Saturday he had no identity. All he had were his hotel keys.”
A few hundred euro of the €1,800 stolen from the post office – run by Iris and Frank Barlow, both in their 70s – has been recovered by gardaí. Mr Barlow was serving his only customer while his wife was in the kitchen of their home attached to the post office when the raid happened.
Gardaí found burned clothing in a field about 500 metres from the post office.