French police investigate ‘electrocution' death of Irish cyclist at Paris metro station
death of an Irish cyclist
following an incident at a metro station in Paris.
Tomás Walsh, from Waterford, died in the early hours of Monday in circumstances that remain unclear, but it is believed the 25-year-old may have been electrocuted after falling on to the underground railway's tracks.
The Paris prosecutor's office has confirmed it has opened an investigation into his death. It said there was no evidence at this stage to suggest foul play.
Police said the body of Mr Walsh was discovered lying on the tracks inside the Grands Boulevards metro station in the northeast of the city.
READ MORE
He had travelled from Ireland to watch the 16th stage of the Tour de France cycling competition.
Online tributes to the cyclist described him as a 'pleasant young man with the world in front of him', a 'credit to his parents' and a 'really great lad'.
In a statement, Comeragh Cycling Club said it had learned of his death with 'great sadness' and said Mr Walsh had been the 'life and soul' of the club.
Altitude, a bike shop in Waterford city, described him as 'one of a golden group of talented cyclists'.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the case and was providing consular assistance.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Politicians want to ‘look tough' on crime, but locking people up in dysfunctional prisons is not the answer
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System, commonly known as the Whitaker Report. It was the most comprehensive investigation ever conducted into Ireland's prisons . However, unlike earlier anniversaries, there are no reflective events marking this one, no looking back to explore lessons learned. This is regrettable as the malaise in Irish prisons Whitaker identified is far worse now than 40 years ago. The report saw Ireland's propensity to send people to prison as excessive, but the rate of incarceration today is more than twice what it was in 1985. READ MORE The Whitaker Report was critical of prison conditions then, saying: 'The triple depressant of overcrowding, idleness and squalor ... dominates most Irish prisons'. All these aspects are worse today. In a recent interview on RTÉ's This Week programme, the Inspector of Prisons, Mark Kelly, used the words 'inhuman', 'degrading' and 'deplorable' to describe life in Irish prisons and noted that 'in some instances conditions can be said to be life-threatening'. He spoke of people 'crammed into cells which were designed for one person', many 'sleeping on thin rubber-coated mattresses on the floor ... their head next to an unpartitioned toilet'. The Inspector said the 'highly volatile' environment 'would be a lot worse ... if the general quality of relations between staff and prisoners wasn't as good as it is'. [ More early release needed to alleviate overcrowded prisons, says Irish Penal Reform Trust Opens in new window ] Is there another way to respond to the troubled and troublesome in our society? He said that treating people in this way and then releasing them back into society was very unlikely to lead them to be law-abiding people. Asked about the Government's plan to create 1,500 more prison spaces, he said that a focus on capacity exclusively would 'absolutely not solve the problem'. Inspector Kelly's approach is in harmony with Whitaker, but the Government is heading headlong in the opposite direction. The Whitaker view was that 'most crime ... originates among unemployed youths in disadvantaged urban areas' and was best addressed by 'the promotion of social advance and social equity', which 'requires effective policies for employment ... for education, for housing and for health and welfare'. His Committee recommended limiting the number in prison, more use of non-custodial penalties and the decriminalisation of some offences. Since prison is costly and likely to be harmful, the core of policy, its members said, should be 'minimum use of custody, minimum use of security and normalisation of prison life'. This approach is based on the concept that the deprivation of liberty is in itself a sufficient punishment. So, in contrast to recent Ministers for Justice who seek to make very long sentences even longer, Whitaker proposed shortening sentences by various means, including greater remission, judicial reviews and 'supervised release at any stage if recommended by ... all the services operating in a prison'. The Whitaker Committee proposed basic living conditions in prison, but the standards they stipulated for every person in prison (single cells, daily out-of-cell time of at least 12 hours, good access to structured activities, dignified family contact) were abandoned wholesale in subsequent decades, leading to the dehumanising conditions that prevail today. Most Irish prisons are also now dysfunctional, at least partly, in that thousands are left with little or no access to basic services such as education, or support for issues such as addiction and mental health. This arises in large part from what John Lonergan describes as a warehousing approach, building cell spaces without providing the necessary services, supports or activities. While Whitaker advised institutions of about 100, the warehouses of today have become ever larger, as cellblocks for hundreds are shoehorned into already overcrowded places, as happened in Midlands, Castlerea and Wheatfield prisons. Today, Midlands and Mountjoy prisons each hold over 1,000. [ Bunk beds purchased to deal with prison overcrowding Opens in new window ] Widespread segregation, and often segregation within segregation and self-separation through fear or anxiety, make conditions worse and increase lock-up time hugely. The current programme for Government envisages intensifying this pattern and speaks of 'expanding existing capacity by 1,500' and recruiting additional prison officers. It makes no reference to providing any of the crucial 'caring services' which Whitaker advocated for all in prison – 'work, education, welfare and psychology'. The Whitaker Report recommended a prison system built on combining 'a caring as well as a custodial role'. Over a decade later, another Government report likewise advocated a rebalancing of custody/ care in the direction of care through 'strengthening of healthcare and of the psychological, educational and training elements'. Yet, prisons have moved decidedly in the opposite direction, driven by politicians seeking to look tough on crime. The Government view is that extra spaces are needed to lock up 'dangerous people', but that is a false characterisation of most people in prison, some of whom may be troublesome but who are more often deeply troubled with complex needs. It leaves those running the prison system, at all levels, in an impossible position. There is something very problematic about the current political approach to crime and punishment, repeatedly cramming more into prisons, all the time making things worse. Moreover, in an era when resources are again scarce, and the capacity of the construction industry in particular is insufficient to meet critical housing and infrastructure needs, can we really afford to splash over half a billion euro on building more substandard prison spaces? The current capital plan allocates €548 million for 1,100 spaces. This July, the Minister for Justice announced that this number will now rise to nearly 1,600 spaces, but the cost of the further expansion has yet to be published. And such outlays will have to be followed by inordinate day-to-day spending to hold people in counterproductive prison conditions. When full current public expenditure is calculated, it comes close to €100,000 per prisoner per year in prison. Surely, as the Whitaker Report indicates, there has to be another way to respond to the troubled and troublesome in our society? Kevin Warner worked for 30 years as national coordinator of education in Irish prisons and received a PhD for research on Nordic penal policy
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
Gardaí investigating unexplained death of man in Co Kerry
Gardaí are investigating 'all of the circumstances' following the unexplained death of a man found unresponsive outside a premises in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry in the early hours of Wednesday morning. An area has been sealed off. At about 4am gardaí were notifiedthat a man in his 70s had been brought to University Hospital Kerry in Tralee. He had earlier been found unresponsive outside a premises on Church Street in Kilgarvan and was subsequently pronounced deceased at the hospital. The State Pathologist and the local coroner have been notified. A postmortem has been arranged, the outcome of which will determine the course of the investigation.
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘Shocking': Some gardaí ‘openly hostile' towards doing their jobs, roads policing review finds
Some frontline gardaí working in roads policing were openly 'hostile' towards doing their jobs and were 'brazen' in expressing it to independent personnel sent to check on their performance. A new report, commissioned by Garda Headquarters after an anonymous garda turned whistleblower, also found some senior Garda members were 'afraid' to intervene when gardaí they were managing were persistently performing poorly. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said he was 'shocked' at what the report had found. Elaine Byrne, the head of the Policing and Community Safety Authority (PCSA), a Garda oversight agency, said the report was a 'wake up' call for the Garda , adding the authority had 'concerns about the absence of performance management within the guards'. She described as 'shocking' the way some gardaí openly expressed their lack of interest in doing their jobs when the personnel who were reviewing roads policing across the Garda went out on duty with them. 'The blatant disregard that some members have ... and they knew they were being reviewed. They were in the cars with people [reviewing them] and they were openly hostile to doing their job,' she said. READ MORE Ms Byrne was also 'shocked' that there 'seemed to be a deference or a fear' among some Garda managers. They were 'not actually doing performance management' because of 'just a fear of being managers within the guards'. She added those managers were based in divisions across the country, where they were responsible for managing policing generally, not just roads policing. Mr Harris said Crowe consultants had been commissioned to carry out the review of roads policing nationally after he had received anonymous correspondence from a Garda member working in roads policing. The review was complete, and the resulting report had been presented to the PCSA in June. He planned to publish the report after it was checked to ensure nobody featured in it could be identified. However, it was clear to him a substantial number, though still a minority, of the gardaí engaged in roads policing were 'brazen' about expressing their disinterest in their jobs and their hostility towards carrying out their basic duties. [ Garda roads policing numbers hit historic low of 618 Opens in new window ] The duties of gardaí enforcing road traffic laws included performing speed checks, detecting people driving dangerously or using mobile phones. Roads policing Garda personnel are also responsible for conducting checkpoints to detect intoxicated drivers, among a wide range of other enforcement measures. 'It's sobering, to say the least, in terms of its conclusions. It is shocking and very worrying,' Mr Harris said of the as yet unpublished Crowe report. 'We were not pleased to see this report and to see the conclusions within it.' As well as preparing to publish the report, Mr Harris said a working group had been established to act on the recommendations within the report. Both he and Ms Byrne made their comments to the media after a public meeting of the PCSA in Dublin on Thursday, where senior Garda officers were questioned about a range of policing issues by members of the authority. In his final address to the authority, before his retirement on September 1st, Mr Harris said he was concerned about the proliferation of violent pornography as it was now being reflected in the nature of the violent sexual offences coming to the Garda's attention. Some people, mostly young men, had been 'radicalised' by watching violent pornography to the extent that when they were arrested for committing sexual offences 'it literally has to be explained to them what they did was wrong'. He believed sexual crimes and violence in the home needed to become public health concerns, rather than just policing issues.
