MEMBERS OF a Co Limerick family have described being tied up and threatened with guns during a robbery by a four-man gang.
The men – who wore balaclavas and were armed with a shotgun and a sledgehammer – smashed their way into the home of Gerry Garvey on Monday night looking for cash.
Mr Garvey – who works as an employee with Paul Partnership in Limerick and as an enterprise official with the Limerick Regeneration Agency – was shocked but was recovering from the ordeal yesterday.
The country house, which the family previously ran as a restaurant, is situated outside the main village of Pallasgreen, about 25km from Limerick city.
It is believed the gang fled with about €5,000, although the family declined to specify the exact amount involved.
Two suspects were later detained by gardaí near Mallow.
Mr Garvey’s wife, Anne – who was forced into an upstairs bathroom with two of her children – said she gave the men cash from a safe in the house after the gang threatened to shoot her family, who have lived there peacefully for the past 13 years.
“He [Gerry] was in the kitchen and they broke in the door. There were four of them and they were wearing balaclavas. They had a shotgun and a sledgehammer.
“They threatened us and shouted and said they were going to kill my daughter. The gun was on Ger’s temple and he was on the ground with the handcuffs behind him.
“He was down on the ground. It was a sawn-off double barrel. They put it to his head. They wanted money and said if we didn’t give it, they said they’d shoot us.”
Ms Garvey’s two youngest children, aged in their early teens, ran upstairs but were chased by the gang.
“These two had run up to the bedroom and two of them came after them. They wanted to lock us in at first and then they wanted the key [of the safe] and they wanted my mobile and I couldn’t find it.
“They wanted the key to the safe. I opened it myself and I handed the money to them myself,” Ms Garvey added.
The couple’s 16-year-old daughter said she thought it was a joke at first when the men started banging on windows in trying to gain entry to the house.
“I thought it was something like the Rubberbandits or something, I didn’t know what it was. When they were first banging the windows I thought it was my brother hitting it and then the third bang – the glass completely smashed into the house,” she said.
“I had the cable ties here [showing her wrists]. I was sitting down and he [her father] was lying down and a man had a gun to his head throughout.
“He was lying on the ground in the living room and I was still in here [the hallway] and there was a man taking care of me who had a sledgehammer, and the guy with my dad had the gun and he was threatening us and stuff.”