Gardaí hunt for violent prisoner freed at gunpoint from hospital

GARDAÍ were last night searching for a violent criminal who was freed at gunpoint as he attended a hospital.

An armed man pointed a shotgun at the head of a prison officer and ordered him to remove handcuffs from the prisoner.

The gunman is thought to have threatened to “blow the head off” the officer if he did not release the man quickly enough.

The prisoner, named as Derek Glennon, is serving five years for manslaughter.

Glennon, with an address on Stanaway Road,

Crumlin, south Dublin, killed a cyclist while driving a stolen car.

Earlier yesterday, it was thought Derek Glennon was related to two notorious, and deceased, brothers from Blanchardstown, west Dublin.

Mark Glennon, aged 32, was shot dead outside his home in Hartstown last month. His brother, Andrew, 30, was shot dead in Co Meath last April.

The brothers ran a major crime gang in the area and were involved in a gangland feud with a rival criminal outfit in north west Dublin.

Gardaí sources in Blanchardstown last night said they did not believe Derek Glennon was related to the brothers.

Derek Glennon, who often used the alias Gleeson, has a reputation for extreme violence.

Since his imprisonment in Wheatfield Prison he has clocked up 49 reports for causing trouble.

In one incident he is said to have “carved up” a man, stabbing the victim a number of times.

Glennon went for treatment in the out patients section of St James’s Hospital at around 10am yesterday.

“A fella came in with a shotgun and went up to the officer, pointed the gun at him and told him to take off the cuffs,” said one prison source.

He said the gunman was accompanied by three other men.

The officer is understood to have become nervous with a gun pointed at him.

The gunman is then reported to have said: “You get them off quickly or I’ll blow the head off you.”

The escape team and Glennon fled out of the building.

They are believed to have stolen a car, driving it to a nearby flats complex, where it was abandoned.

Gardaí from different parts of the city were assisting in garda efforts yesterday to trace the men.

There was no one available from the Prison Service yesterday.

Earlier this year a prisoner used CS gas to escape custody while attending Tallaght Hospital.