Car park thieves foiled by quick-thinking Mayo woman in Castlebar

MARY Moylette was rushing back home to watch Mayo play Kerry the Saturday before last.

She had just packed up her shopping and sat back into her car in Castlebar when a man tapped on her window.

“Excuse me ma’am, we come show you. This looks very dangerous,” the man told her.

He ushered her to the back of her car where a fuse wire was coming out from the bottom of her vehicle.

However, having read a Mayo News report last month about a car theft in a car park, she remained vigilant.

“That alerted me to keep my eyes peeled and keep looking and I kept watching each side. And he kept insisting on me to go down to look,” Mary told The Mayo News.

As it was just before throw-in for the Mayo-Kerry game, there were no other shoppers around at this time.

“There wasn’t a person in sight. It was awful quiet so even if I wanted to shout for help or anything, but I hadn't thought that either,” Mary recalls.

Forewarned is forearmed
MARY recognised the would-be thieves modus operandi, “they lure you down to the back to get you to stoop down so the other person can work away.”

The man became annoyed as Mary wouldn’t stoop down. She laughs that if she had gone down, she wouldn’t have been able to get back up as she has a bad knee.

It was at this point that she saw her car door moving and told the man that she would check it out when she got home.
As she walked to the front door of her car, she saw another man “down creeping on his honkers” between her car and another vehicle.

The other man was “sneaking to get out as they knew I wasn’t being cooperative.”

He got out between the cars and stood up and had a shopping bag in his hand.

Mary confronted the man and asked to see what was in it and there was a small piece of clothing in it.

“He obviously had that bag to put my bag into and it would look like he was just going about his business.”

Mary was shaking when she got home and her daughter-in-law called the Gardaí and reported the incident.

The man had been seconds away from potentially snatching her bag but fortunately Mary’s quick thinking had saved the day.