A man has been accused of brandishing a hammer at a shop in Celbridge, forcing the manager to open safes and stealing more than \u20ac90,000 before fleeing to Lanzarote.<\/p>\n
Stephen McMullen (27), of Rowlagh Gardens, Clondalkin, Dublin allegedly posted videos of the cash on Snapchat with details about the raid minutes after it took place on July 17th last.<\/p>\n
Bail was set at \u20ac3,500 when he appeared before Judge John Brennan at Dublin District Court on Monday following his arrest on Saturday.<\/p>\n
He was charged with robbery and production of a hammer as a weapon capable of inflicting serious injury during the incident at Costcutter, Castle Village, Celbridge, Co Kildare.<\/p>\n
Gda Jennifer Finnegan objected to bail due to the seriousness of the case. She told Judge Brennan the incident took place shortly before 5am when two men arrived in a van which had been stolen in a burglary in Maynooth.<\/p>\n
The manager was opening up at the time when the robbers, one armed with a hammer, allegedly threatened his life and made him open safes. . Gda Finnegan told the court Mr McMullen threatened the manager to dispose of CCTV footage. <\/p>\n
It was claimed there was video evidence of the accused arriving home in a taxi at 8.28am carrying a Lidl bag. The court heard the money was wrapped in distinctive white bands; the injured party provided samples of them to garda\u00ed, and they were identical to those on the recovered cash.<\/p>\n
The money also had identifying features, such as the injured party\u2019s writing on the notes, when he was counting them, the judge heard.<\/p>\n
Searching Mr McMullen\u2019s address recovered \u20ac27,870, but \u20ac63,000 has yet to be found. <\/p>\n
Gda Finnegan said a Snapchat account on the phone posted videos of the stolen cash.. She stated there were also text messages telling his friends he got more than \u20ac90,000 in a robbery. <\/p>\n
A day later, he flew to Lanzarote and booked a return flight to Belfast on July 27th, but that was not taken. On August 8th, he returned via England to attend his brother\u2019s funeral. <\/p>\n
Questioned by defence solicitor Catherine Dolan, the garda agreed that no DNA had been recovered from the cash or the hammer, but that analysis had to be carried out.<\/p>\n
The defence disputed that the Snapchat account on the phone was linked to Mr McMullen, stressing he had the presumption of innocence and there was no forensic evidence against him.<\/p>\n
Judge Brennan set bail in his bond of \u20ac500 but stipulated that he needed a \u20ac3,000 independent surety to be released under a range of conditions, including the surrender of his passport and a curfew.<\/p>\n
He was remanded in custody with consent to bail and legal aid was granted. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been accused of brandishing a hammer at a shop in Celbridge, forcing the manager to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8301,18,13,14,6,19,17,3625,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-8299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dublin-district-court","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-kildare","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}