POLICE WERE last night hunting for a gang who kidnapped a woman and her two children and forced her partner to take a substantial sum of money from a shop near Lisburn, believed to be up to £100,000.
Detectives from the PSNI major crime operations team appealed for public assistance in helping to apprehend the gang who carried out the so-called tiger kidnapping yesterday morning.
Gang members called to the home of the family in Hannahstown on the outskirts of west Belfast between 4.30am and 6.30am yesterday. The mother and her two children were forced into a stolen blue Ford Transit van and driven to the Boucher Road area of south Belfast, police said.
The children's father was ordered to drive his own car to his place of work, understood to be the large Marks and Spencer store at the Sprucefield Shopping Centre just outside Lisburn. He was instructed to take money from a safe and deposit it at a silver or grey Vauxhall Corsa car.
Police said the woman and her children escaped unharmed but shaken by their ordeal. The Ford van was seized by police for forensic examination. It was stolen in Garvagh, Co Derry, in September.
