Latest news with #violentdeath
BreakingNews.ie
11-08-2025
- BreakingNews.ie
Inquest into fatal assault of former Limerick sports star set for October
An inquest into the violent death of a father of one and former Republic of Ireland youth soccer star, in Limerick City three years ago, has been scheduled to take place in October. Alan Bourke, (48), of St Mary's Park, Limerick, was fatally assaulted by Michael Casey, (40), of Cathedral Place, at Parnell Street, Limerick City, on April 15th, 2022. Advertisement Casey, who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Bourke, was jailed for six years for the attack. The inquest has been scheduled at Limerick Coroner's Court on October 22nd. Casey's sentencing hearing heard that he assaulted Mr Bourke after a man in his company stole a bag of cans of alcohol from Mr Bourke, who had tried to get it back off the man. Limerick Circuit Court heard that paramedics tended to Mr Bourke at the scene, however, he was pronounced dead as he as being brought by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick. Advertisement Mr Bourke, a well known former manager at a tool plant, had fallen on hard times due to struggles with alcohol, the court heard. Formerly a rising soccer star, Mr Bourke won a Munster Junior Cup medal with Mungret Regional FC in 1994 and was capped for the Republic of Ireland junior team in 1996. His funeral mass heard he had been a top-class sportsman and had excelled at soccer, rugby and handball. On the night he died, Mr Bourke and a friend left sheltered accommodation in Limerick City to go begging in order to get money to buy alcohol, the court heard. CCTV footage played at Casey's sentencing hearing showed Mr Bourke walking his bicycle, a suitcase containing clothes and a sleeping bag, as he went to meet up with his friend again. Advertisement Mr Bourke had purchased ten cans of beer and was walking near Colbert Rail Station when he was accosted by Casey and others. Prosecuting senior counsel, Anne Rowland SC, told the court that Casey struck Mr Bourke with a 'violent and aggressive blow' after another man who was in Casey's company, who was not before the court, had allegedly taken his bag of cans and would not give it back. The CCTV footage played in court showed Mr Bourke falling backwards and his head striking the pavement. Ms Rowland said Casey and the others 'callously' walked away taking Mr Bourke's belongings as he 'was lying on the ground completely motionless'. Advertisement A post-mortem examination report on Mr Bourke's body stated he suffered a brain hemorrhage, fractured skull, as well as bruising to his face and forehead. The court heard that while Casey was being held in custody following his arrest for the attack on Mr Bourke, he told Gardai: 'It was an accident...I was friends with Alan, we laughed and cried together, I hit him, I was drunk, he was drunk...I'm really sorry, and sorry to his family.' Mr Bourke's sister, Diane, described him as 'a loving son, father and friend to many' and said her and her family's lives 'changed forever' after his death. 'Alan had the biggest heart and was the apple of his late mother's eye. We try to remember how he lived and not how he died,' she said. Advertisement 'I avoid Parnell Street at all costs, it is awful to be scared all the time in your own city. I'm not Alan's sister anymore, I'm the girl whose brother was killed.' Sentencing judge, Dermot Sheehan, said Mr Bourke excelled at sport, but was vulnerable later in his life, and he sadly had experiencing homelessness around the time of his death. 'It was a significant assault, it was a dispute over a bag of cans,' the judge said. Michael Casey, was previously jailed after he and his cousin David Casey, (31), Coolock, Dublin, had pleaded guilty to burglaries, including at the home of pensioner bachelor, John O'Donoghue, on August 27th, 2015. Mr O'Donoghue (62), Toomaline, Doon, Co Limerick, collapsed and died after he came upon the pair who ran off without helping. In 2018, the Court of Appeal increased Michael Casey and David Casey's sentences for the burglary from three and a half years to seven years with the final eight months suspended after it found their original sentences were unduly lenient.
Irish Times
08-08-2025
- Irish Times
Gardaí investigating possibility murder victim Ian Walsh was killed by someone he knew
Gardaí investigating the murder of a 49-year-old man in his home in Co Tipperary over the August Bank Holiday weekend are examining the possibility that he was killed by somebody known to him. The body of Ian Walsh, an employee of Irish Rail , was found with stab wounds in a downstairs room at his semi-detached house in the Ravenswood estate, about a kilometre from the centre of Carrick-on-Suir, by gardaí at around 3.30am last Monday morning. Garda technical experts found no sign of forced entry at the house, leading detectives to believe that whoever killed Mr Walsh was known to him and may have been admitted by him to the property. A post-mortem examination by State Pathologist Dr Yvonne McCartney on Mr Walsh's remains at University Hospital Waterford on Wednesday confirmed that he had suffered a violent death and was the victim of foul play. READ MORE Gardaí have not disclosed whether they recovered a weapon at the scene, if there was any sign of a struggle or whether Mr Walsh suffered defensive wounds in the fatal assault. Officers are still trying to narrow the time of the killing, as the last confirmed sighting of Mr Walsh alive was at 8pm on Friday, August 1st. Although he failed to meet up with friends on Sunday, they believe he could have been killed between late Friday and Sunday. Gardaí are also keeping an open mind on a motive for the murder of Mr Walsh, a keen cyclist, who was a familiar figure around Carrick-on-Suir. His remains will lie in repose in Waterford on Monday evening, with a cremation service in Ringaskiddy, in Co Cork, on Tuesday.
Irish Times
23-05-2025
- Irish Times
Michael Gaine homicide case: The full story so far
The sun was shining in Kenmare this week as tourists sipped coffees outside restaurants and browsed stalls around the town's square. All seemed oblivious to the drama unfolding in the hills above this picturesque town in south Kerry. For locals, it was different. The mood has turned sombre lately as one subject dominates conversations: the macabre details of the apparent violent death met by 56-year-old local man Michael Gaine on his hillside farm, less than 6km from Kenmare. Gaine's farm lies just off the popular tourist Ring of Kerry route that wends between peaks and valleys. READ MORE 'It's been the talk of the place since Mike disappeared two months ago and since we heard the news at the weekend, people are in an awful state altogether,' said one man, shaking his head. 'It doesn't bear thinking about – it's beyond belief.' The details, when they emerged last weekend, shocked locals. Gaine's nephew, Mark O'Regan, was spreading slurry on his uncle's farm with a local agricultural contractor when they noticed that the slurry tanker was not working properly. They went to examine the trailing chute at the rear of the machine and found it blocked. When they examined it closely, they discovered the obstruction was caused by human remains. They immediately notified gardaí who quickly arrived on the scene. Defence Forces personnel join the search for Michael 'Mike' Gaine near Kenmare in Co Kerry. Photograph: Noel Sweeney/PA Wire After almost two months of fruitless searching, involving scores of gardaí, mountain search teams and Defence Forces personnel, this was the first significant clue to explaining what had happened to Gaine, who had disappeared in March. A native of Kenmare, Gaine had grown up on Railway Road in the town with his parents, James and Sheila and his younger sisters, Noreen and Catherine. The family originally came from Carrig East, midway between Kenmare and Moll's Gap, a scenic pass between the town and Killarney. The Gaines have been farming around Kenmare for generations – the 1911 census shows there were 49 Gaines in the town, the vast majority farmers or cattle dealers from nearby hillside areas such as Carrig, Carhoomeengar and Lissyclerig. Gaine attended Kenmare National School and after completing his secondary education at Kenmare Vocational School, he worked in construction for a period before being employed as a fencing contractor. He helped his mother Sheila at the farm after his father James died in 2003. By then, Gaine had met his future wife Janice at a ball in Killarney. The couple had travelled to Australia and New Zealand before they settled down at an architect-designed house they had built on their land at Carhoomeengar East in the late 1990s. Gaine used to make the short journey from his home to Carhoomeengar East to Carrig to help his mother Sheila on the farm but he ran the farm himself when she could no longer manage. She died in a nursing home in Kenmare on February 1st. Excavations on the farm of Michael Gaine near Kenmare in Co Kerry. Photograph: Noel Sweeney/PA Wire It was just two weeks after the month's mind memorial mass for his mother that Gaine disappeared. He was last seen on CCTV footage, buying mobile phone credit at Whyte's Centra in Kenmare at 9.48am on March 20th before driving off in his bronze-coloured 10-year-old Toyota Rav 4. When he failed to return home that evening and did not answer his phone, Janice contacted her sister-in-law Catherine. Catherine's husband Sean O'Regan, a garda in Kenmare, reported Gaine missing to gardaí on Friday, March 21st, triggering a missing persons investigation. That day, friends and family began searching the farmyard at Carrig East. It was here that gardaí found Gaine's wallet and mobile phone in his car. Up to 200 volunteers joined the search on Saturday and Sunday to comb the 1,000 acres of hillside around the farm. Gardaí quickly established there had been no activity on Gaine's bank accounts and an examination of his mobile phone showed a number of missed calls but no outgoing calls or texts after the last sighting of him at Centra. On March 24th, members of Kerry County Fire Service assisted gardaí in carrying out a search of the slurry tank under the 20-metre slatted unit where Gaine had kept his 40 suckler Limousin and Charolais cows. Those, along with 500 sheep, earned Gaine his income from the farm. The Garda Press Office issued a series of statements in relation to the search for Gaine, which was still, at this point, a missing persons investigation. No statement made specific references to the 50,000-gallon slurry tank being searched; the Garda said simply: 'Searches have been carried out at Michael's farm.' Media reports said searches of the slurry tank took place on March 24th – four days after Gaine went missing – and one Garda source told The Irish Times the tank's main chamber was drained fully, and the slurry in a second smaller chamber was then filtered into the main chamber. But no human remains were detected. Missing Co Kerry farmer Michael Gaine: body parts were found in a slurry tank on his farm. One local told The Irish Times that the main tank was drained of liquid and that up to a half a metre of solids remained. Members of the fire service wearing breathing apparatus then waded through the solids, prodding them with poles. But, again, they detected no remains. Events took a grim twist last weekend when Gaine's nephew and the agricultural contractor emptied the remaining slurry from the tank and spread it on a number of fields near the farm. By then, the investigation had been upgraded to a murder inquiry. The change in status came just a day before Gaine's wife and his sister Catherine made a video appeal on April 30th for any information about what happened to their husband and brother. 'We just want to Michael to come home – we want to know what happened to him because if we can't find Michael, I just don't know what I am going to do,' said Janice. She said her husband's disappearance was 'totally out of character'. Garda sources say the decision to upgrade the investigation to a murder inquiry came after exhausting all possibilities that some accident had befallen Gaine or that he had self-harmed given that surface searches of the farm had yielded no trace of him. Locals say they believed from the beginning that Gaine had been the victim of foul play and was most likely disposed of in the slurry tank. Sources close to gardaí say they, as much as anyone else, were shocked by the manner in which Gaine's remains were discovered. 'They searched the slurry tanks thinking they were looking for a body – they never thought that Mike Gaine would be cut into pieces and dumped into the tank; they never thought they were dealing with that level of barbarity,' said one source with an insight into the Garda's approach. Gardaí believe Gaine was murdered by a person known to him soon after he arrived at the farmyard at Carrig on the morning of March 20th and that his killer dismembered his body in the slatted unit before disposing of the body parts in the underlying slurry tank. A chainsaw was discovered hidden in the farmyard and brought to Forensic Science Ireland's laboratory in Dublin for examination to see if any DNA evidence could be obtained. Gardaí arrested a man in his 50s last Sunday in Tralee and questioned him for up to 24 hours before releasing him without charge. The Garda Press Office statement issued on his release made no mention of a file being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), suggesting that gardaí face a challenge in making any case against the man. Back in Kenmare, nobody is willing to speak publicly about the Garda investigation to date. Privately, people are angry and few hold out any hope of Gaine's killer being brought to justice for a crime that has left many stunned and numbed. One local, who did not want to be named, said: 'This is gruesome – it's the sort of things the drug cartels do … When people saw the markers in the fields where they found parts of Mike, they were shocked.' The local said people in the area were 'raging over the handling of it all by the gardaí'. People were wondering why the Garda inquiry was not 'declared a murder investigation sooner' and asking why the slurry tank was not emptied and searched properly, they said. 'They would have found out what happened Mike much sooner. They are saying if that was done eight weeks ago, we would be in a totally different situation now – the guards would have had much better physical evidence to put to the suspect when they arrested him,' the local said. 'Instead, it looks like they are facing an uphill battle to get justice for Mike.'
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Sheriff Grady Judd: 'Violent death' at group home prompts murder investigation
The Brief Sheriff Grady Judd says that a "violent death" at a group home has prompted a murder investigation in Bartow. First responders found the victim, an 81-year-old white man, dead this morning at an independent group living home owned by ET Care. Judd says they will release more information on Monday. BARTOW, Fla. - Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd says that his office is helping the Bartow Police Department investigate what they are calling a "violent death." What we know First responders found the victim, an 81-year-old white man, dead this morning at an independent group living home. Three other people lived in the group home that is owned by ET Care. Judd says that the man was last seen on Saturday evening. READ: Riverview High School teacher arrested for having sexual relations with student: HCSO What we don't know No other information has been released and Sheriff Grady Judd says they will release more information on Monday. CLICK HERE:>>>Follow FOX 13 on YouTube The Source Information for this story was provided by Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. STAY CONNECTED WITH FOX 13 TAMPA: Download the FOX Local app for your smart TV Download FOX Local mobile app: Apple | Android Download the FOX 13 News app for breaking news alerts, latest headlines Download the SkyTower Radar app Sign up for FOX 13's daily newsletter
