Woman picks up Garda gun and takes Luas to return it!
A WOMAN who stumbled across a Garda sub-machine gun and ammunition ‘didn’t even look in the bag’ before she boarded a Luas with the weapon to hand it over at a Dublin Garda station.
The loss of the compact Heckler & Koch MP7 weapon and hundreds of rounds of ammunition occurred in Harcourt Street in Dublin city’s southside. It’s understood two members of
the Emergency Response Unit lost the weapon after it fell from their boot of their Audi A6 estate car. Sources say the gardaí had been going out on routine patrol at the time.
The gun was not loaded at the time, sources also confirmed.
The car was one of three vehicles leaving in convoy from an underground carpark at the force’s Dublin regional headquarters at Harcourt Square at 5.30pm on Tuesday. It’s believed the vehicle had to travel over a security ramp on its way out.
Within a couple of minutes, officers realised that the boot had opened and the machine gun was
missing. Around ten minutes later, a woman walking in the area noticed the hold-all, which had ‘Garda’ printed in it. She picked it up and got on a nearby Luas to Store Street on the northside.
A senior source said: ‘This woman didn’t even look in the bag. She just picked it up and did her civic duty by handing it into gardaí.’
The officers in question soon realised the weapon was missing and had notified their superiors.’
Engineers from Audi have been called in to examine the closing mechanism on the boot.
An internal investigation as well as Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission probe are also both under way.
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said he was ‘extremely concerned’ at the incident.
Fell out boot of a Garda car