01/12/2008

Police Probe Robberies

Police have launched an appeal for information on a gang who abducted a woman from south Belfast last week.

The victim was forced to drive her white Audi from Dudley street to Glencolin Close in west Belfast.

She was then put into a white van while her captors demanded money from her relative, who manages a petrol station.

She was released unhurt hours later on the Ballykennedy Road at Nutt's Corner after the kidnappers failed to get any money.

In a separate violent incident, a man has been robbed at gunpoint at a house in the Ardmore Avenue area of south Belfast.

The robbery was carried out by three men, one of whom had a firearm, at 11.30am on Sunday.

The men, who were dressed in workmen outfits and baseball caps, made off with a sum of cash in a green Renault Laguna car.

However, in a separate investigation, it has emerged that a 28-year-old man has been charged with making threats to kill, robbery, possession of an offensive weapon and handling stolen goods.

He was due to appear in Belfast Magistrates Court on Monday.

The charges relate to the police's investigation into an attempted armed robbery outside the Park Centre shopping mall in the Donegall Road area of west Belfast.

Police said that on Friday evening, a man armed with a knife tried to rob a cash-in-transit van outside the busy shopping complex.

A Taser stun gun was fired by the police during the incident which has been routinely reported to the NI Police Ombudsman.

(BMcC/KMcA)

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