Gardaí ‘close in’ on carjack suspect

GARDAÍ are ‘closing in’ on the man they believe is behind a ‘carjacking’ incident in which a man flagged down a female driver while wearing a hi-vis jacket and then stole her car at knifepoint.

The Irish Daily Mail understands that detectives last week recovered the stolen 4x4 abandoned in a car park in Palmerstown in west Dublin.

The victim was able to provide gardaí with a description of the suspect, and officers have drawn up a photo-fit of him.

Detectives believe they now know the identity of the alleged culprit, a criminal known to them from south west Dublin.

Officers are now trawling CCTV footage to track the route he travelled after the violent car-jacking and where he eventually abandoned the 4x4. Sources say that ‘an arrest is expected soon’.

On February 19, the car thief, wearing a hivis jacket, flagged down a woman as she drove home from work and stole her car at knifepoint. The woman, in her 40s, pulled over her 4x4 when she saw a man in a hi-vis jacket signalling for assistance as she approached a roundabout near Kill, Co. Kildare.

But as soon as he approached her vehicle, a Blue Hyundai Tucson, he immediately produced a knife and threatened her. The woman, who works for an IT company in Leixlip, fled her vehicle and ran away on foot. She phoned 999 moments after the man drove her car away at speed on the motorway towards Dublin. Sources said the woman was left ‘traumatised’ following the incident.

Gardaí said in a statement in the aftermath that the suspect in the case ‘may have been involved in a single-car collision on the Straffan Road a short time earlier’.

It is understood the car involved in that collision was a Toyota Starlet which had been stolen from a housing estate in the Tallaght, Dublin, hours earlier.

Criminals managed to steal the vehicle after they gained access to its key by ‘fishing’ through the Tallaght householder’s letter box, using a magnetic device.