Robber attempts to smash in young woman’s car window
By Mary Dennehy
A WOMAN in her mid-twenties was left traumatised after a young male approached her in an underground car-park and violently tried to smash in her passenger window with an iron bar – the second such incident in Tallaght in the space of a week.
As reported in The Echo, a woman was left shaken last week when a man attempted to smash her passenger window with a hammer while she waited at the Burger King drive-thru on the Belgard Road.
According to Garda reports, the man was unable to break the car window and eventually pulled open the door and snatched the woman’s handbag from the passenger seat.
This week, a second similar attack occurred in the underground carpark at the Fortunes Lawn apartments in Citywest, when a female resident was parking her car just after 10pm.
Wishing to remain anonymous, the female motorist said: “Residents living in the apartment block have to ring a number to open the gate – no-one answers the number, it just sends an automated signal to open the gate to the underground carpark.
“The lad who targeted me must have came in the gate directly after me and it looks like he put a traffic cone at the sensor to the gate so that it wouldn’t close and he could get back out.
“I had bags with me and was leaning over the passenger side trying to organise them and something caught my eye.
“All of a sudden a guy no older than 21 years was standing at my passenger window with a long iron bar and he started hitting it.
“He wasn’t saying anything just repeatedly hitting the window and at that point I didn’t know whether he wanted to attack me or take my car.
“I started screaming and banging on the horn and when I started making noise he shouted that he wanted my bag.
“I had my bag on me so I just open it and took out my purse. I opened the car door, he grabbed my purse and ran out of the car park. All in all it only lasted about three minutes but it felt a lot longer.”
She said: “I reported it to the Garda and to my apartment management.
“Security really needs to be examined in underground car parks, nobody responded to the noise I was making.
“Maybe security men need to be introduced, but something definitely has to be done, underground car parks are too isolated and people are very vulnerable in them.
“I hope by speaking out that other female drivers will be more aware of their surroundings when parking and to maybe get someone to meet them in their underground carpark if they are arriving home late.”
Confirming the attack, a senior Garda source told The Echo that there has been “a number” of these types of robberies in Tallaght recently, with two people currently detained at Tallaght Garda Station in connection with one robbery.
The source said that investigation officers are actively working through the other cases that involved a motorist being approached violently.
Anybody with information on the incident, which happened on Sunday, April 17, is encouraged to contact Tallaght Garda Station on 6666000.
