Mullingar tech shop staff foil attempted robbery

A Westmeath tech shop has taken to social media to highlight an incident in which staff members prevented an attempted robbery of their Pearse Street store.

ReTechIT Mullingar's Facebook page shows a video clip of an incident in which a robber poses as a customer before trying to leave the store with a phone without paying.

This is not the first time the Mullingar branch of the tech store chain have been targeted by criminals. The store was the victim of a €20,000 robbery in 2019, and another one a year and half later when they had stock valued at €6,000 taken.

“We have been targeted before,” store's manager Breen Costello told the Examiner, “it's the nature of our stock. They are small items with high value, easy to sell on and easy for criminals to find a buyer for.”

The most recent attempted smash and grab was stymied by staff as they foiled the attempts by a hapless robber. The post concluded by commending the staff members who intervened to thwart the robbery: “Well done to John and Breen, you'd know bar work was a past job.”

Breen says previous employment experience helped him to deal with the incident: “I have a background in pub work, so I am used to dealing with difficult situations. Though we have no formal training, we know how to deal with such situations, and know to back off if there was a weapon involved.”

The shop's footage of the attempted robbery online highlighting the incident says: “He tried another shop in Mullingar, also feel free to share so other shops can see it, these guys usually go from shop to shop, from town to town. He can have his 15 minutes of fame from it.”

Breen hopes the decision to post the footage will discourage other criminals: “You can't let people get away with things like this, putting it up online is just a way of deterring this behaviour. It all worked out well in the end.”