Jury out in Stag bank robbery trial

A JURY has retired in the case of a man accused of attempting to take £500,000 from a bank by kidnapping its employees and forcing them to open a safe.

Michael Dunphy (45), of HMP Doncaster, is on trial at Sheffield Crown Court accused of four counts of kidnap and three counts of attempted robbery.

He is said to have been part of a gang of robbers who tried to take £500,000 from a branch of Barclays at Stag roundabout in November.

Three of the would-be robbers are said to have followed a Barclays employee from her home in a stolen Audi and kidnapped her, her seven-year-old daughter, and her colleagues Zoe Copley and Jo Blakey.

They are said to have forced two of the bank's employees to open a safe before fleeing the scene empty-handed minutes before police officers arrived.

Dunphy’s case is that he was facilitating the attempted robbery under duress and he had no knowledge of the kidnapping.

The jury in the case retired at 3.15pm today (Monday) to begin its deliberations.