5 days ago
Gardaí hope postmortems will establish Cork couple's cause of death
Gardaí
in Cork are hoping postmortem examinations today will establish what happened to an elderly couple whose
bodies were found
Monday evening
at their home outside the city.
The 84-year-old-man and his 79-year-old-wife were discovered around 5pm when the woman's brother called to cut their grass at their terraced house in Glounthaune village in east Cork.
The man was unable to gain access to the property and, becoming concerned for the couple's welfare, he called to a neighbour's house looking for assistance to gain entry.
The two men forced in the front door to gain entry, only to discover the couple unresponsive on the floor at the foot of the stairs.
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They alerted the gardaí and the emergency services were called. The couple was pronounced dead at the scene by a local GP and gardaí set about organising postmortems.
The bodies remained at the property overnight and were removed early this morning to Cork University Hospital where a hospital pathologist has begun a postmortem.
Gardaí are hoping the postmortems will establish what exactly happened the couple. However,they are satisfied from their initial inquiries that foul play was not involved.
As a consequence they have not requested the services of the State Pathologist's office, which is the case when gardaí believe somebody has died as a result of criminal activity.
Garda technical experts were nonetheless called to the scene and began a forensic examination to try and piece together the sequence of events that led to the couple's deaths.
One line of inquiry gardaí are examining is whether one of the couple may have fallen on the stairs and the other tried to grab and save them but also fell down the stairs.
Gardaí are confident the postmortems will also establish whether either of the couple might have suffered a medical episode which may have contributed to a fall on the stairs.
Gardaí have spoken to relatives and established the couple were alive on Sunday evening. As such it is believed they died sometime on Sunday night or Monday morning or afternoon.
Locals say the couple was very private and kept very much to themselves in the quiet and small grouping of houses in Glounthaune village which is located 10km east of Cork city.
