‘I thought they were going to kill me’ - post mistress

The trial of a Cavan resident accused of a “tiger kidnapping” raid at a Dublin post office four years ago is continuing in legal argument at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court today (Tuesday), writes Aoife Nic Ardghail.
Paschal Kelly (52) has pleaded not guilty to trespass and falsely imprisoning postmistress Susan Lawlor, her daughter Emma Carter and Italian student Gabriella Saisa at Seabury Drive, Malahide, Dublin, on September 25, 2014.
Mr Kelly, with an address at Ballyjamesduff, has also pleaded not guilty to robbing Ms Lawlor of cash at Bayside Post Office, Sutton, Dublin; and threatening to kill her, Ms Carter and Ms Saisa at an unknown location in the State.
He has also denied unlawful possession of a vehicle, all on the same date. 
In his opening address on the first day of the trial last Wednesday, prosecution counsel Kerida Naidoo SC told the jury that it is the State’s case that three men were involved and they took about €90,000 in an incident, which lasted from 1am to 8am on the date.

 

'My freedom was taken from me in minutes' 
On day two of the trial, Ms Lawlor described how she heard screaming before two men burst into her bedroom. She said she managed to ring a special “tiger raid hotline number” issued by An Post and had slid her phone under her bed covers, when a man dressed in black entered her room.
She said this intruder, who she named “Number 1”, demanded to know if she’d made a call. 
Ms Lawlor denied this and handed over her phone and then the man was joined by another intruder dressed in black. She said this man “Number 2” brought her adult daughter Emma Carter and Italian student Gabriella Saisa into the room.
“My freedom was taken from me in minutes and my concern was for my daughter and Gabriella...I was very concerned, I thought they were going to kill me and I feared for my life,” she revealed.
Ms Lawlor said these men tied her and the other two women’s hands with cable ties and bundled them all into the back seat of her car, before driving them to a field in an unknown location. 
She told how she saw a small black handgun on her bed before leaving the house in the early hours of that morning. 
The postmistress also described how she spat in the back seat of a car and plucked one of her hairs out as the kidnappers drove her to the postoffice. She told the court: “If I died, I wanted gardaí to know I’d been in the car.”
Ms Lawlor told the court that, while in the car, her own phone rang in her handbag, which the raiders had taken with them. 
“The Number 1 guy freaked and said ‘who the fuck is ringing you at this hour of the morning?’,” she said. Her daughter tried to calm the situation by suggesting it was one of the neighbours.
“I feared for my life because the Number 1 guy kept saying he was going to shoot me if I’d made the call,” Ms Lawlor testified.
She told the jury that they eventually turned into a field, where a third man got into the car and said “I heard yous made a call”.
She described how she was threatened and beaten by Number 1 when she told the raiders the post office safe was on a timer, but that they eventually drove her to her workplace and robbed the cash. 
She said Number 1 kept telling her he would shoot her if she didn’t “comply”.
Ms Lawlor said, as soon as the men left, she hit the panic button and phoned gardaí.
Other witnesses to give in the evidence in the case so far are Detective Garda Eamon Keane who told the court, on Monday, that he saw a car driven by a man in a “ski mask” near a postmistress’s home a few hours after her abduction.

 

Commotion
Earlier, Chubb Ireland employee Adam Coughlan told Mr Naidoo that he was working at his company’s monitoring centre when a call came through on the “tiger kidnapping line”.
He said that he heard only “commotion” in the background and the caller’s number came up as belonging to Ms Lawlor. The relevant personnel in An Post and the Gardaí were informed. Hugh Kennedy, manager of An Post’s Crime Prevention Unit also gave evidence of the post office’s alarm being disarmed about 6am that morning and a panic alarm being activated later that morning, details of which he had relayed to gardaí.
Gabriella Saisa, the Italian student, also gave evidence of the ordeal. She told the court of being woken by Ms Carter screaming, being tied up and taken on a car journey. Ms Saisa said that she thought the men were going to kill her.
She too said that one of the men had a small gun with a brown handle.
The post mistress’s daughter Emma Carter also gave evidence of seeing two intruders dressed in black at the bottom of the stairs.
“When the guys were coming up the stairs I was absolutely terrified. It felt like a horror movie, I thought they were just coming to kill me,” Ms Carter told the jury.
She said that, once she realised it was a tiger kidnapping, she “knew it would be okay” if the raiders got the money.
She described how the taller of the first two men, described by her mother as Number 1, was the most “terrifying” and showed no compassion. 
Both women confirmed to Martin O’Rourke SC, defending, that gardaí had never asked them to take part in an identification parade. 
The trial continues before Judge Karen O’Connor and a jury of five women and seven men and is expected to continue for another five weeks.