Gardaí in Waterford were last night continuing to question a man arrested in connection with a fatal stabbing outside an apartment in Tramore late on Thursday night. Gardaí found Michael O’Dwyer (25) bleeding heavily from a stab wound to the chest after they responded to an emergency call from neighbours to attend the scene of an incident at the Seafield Estate at about 11.30pm.
Mr O’Dwyer, Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny, was brought by ambulance to Waterford Regional Hospital in Ardkeen where he died at about 1.30am yesterday.
Garda Supt Finbarr Murphy of Tramore is leading a murder inquiry which was established last night after the receipt of postmortem results from State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy.
Gardaí believe that Mr O’Dwyer had been drinking with two friends in Kilkenny on Thursday afternoon and were invited down for a house party by a man who was renting an apartment in Tramore.
A row broke out but appeared to have been resolved. Afterwards Mr O’Dwyer was comforting a younger man outside the apartment when he was attacked and fatally stabbed. Gardaí have taken witness statements while Garda technical experts from Dublin also carried out forensic examination of the scene.
Mr O’Dwyer was the second youngest of five boys and lived with his mother in Stoneyford. His younger brother Conor said that his mother was too upset to talk about the death of her son and said he was “a great brother” who was “very quiet”.
Local Labour Party councillor Marie Fitzpatrick said the O’Dwyers were “a very quiet family” and recalled how Ms O’Dwyer moved with her sons out to the countryside following the death of her husband. Ms Fitzpatrick said Mr O’Dwyer must have “been in the wrong place at the wrong time” when he was stabbed.
Many of the houses and apartments in Seafield, close to the scene of the killing, are empty at this time of year. Meanwhile some neighbours who were at home yesterday said they did not realise there was a party going on nearby.
One local said he was watching a film at home and heard “a bit of a commotion” and thought there might have been a party going on. Then he saw blue flashing lights pass his window and realised that gardaí and an ambulance had arrived. “I knew something bad was going on.”