Gardai launched inquiries into a murder and a suspicious death in Dublin last night, and a third investigation into an attack that left a man fighting for his life in an intensive care unit.
The deaths were reported within 15 minutes of each other yesterday afternoon.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Dublin Fire Brigade responded to a 999 call to an apartment on the Royal Canal Bank road of Phibsboro, north of the city centre, where the body of a 24-year-old Jamaican mother of two was discovered in a bedroom by relatives.
She was tended to by ambulance technicians and taken to the Mater Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The apartment was preserved for technical examination by the Garda forensic team from Mountjoy station last night. Her remains were taken to the City Morgue, where a post-mortem took place last night. Det Insp Christy Mangan of Fitzgibbon Street Garda station, who is heading the investigation, said her death was being treated as murder, as she appeared to have received a number of blows from a blunt instrument.
The victim had been living and working in Ireland for some time and had a two-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, in Tallaght, the body of a man was discovered on open ground at 2.15 p.m. yesterday. The man, believed to be in his twenties, was lying in a field in the Killinarden area of Tallaght when he was noticed by a passer-by. Gardaí at Tallaght station are investigating his death.
The remains were taken to the City Morgue last night and a post-mortem will take place today.
In another incident, a 22-year-old man was stabbed eight times in the chest shortly after midnight yesterday in west Dublin.
The man, who was attacked in a house in Dunawley Drive in Clondalkin, was taken to Tallaght Hospital and was in a critical condition last night with serious lung injuries. Gardaí are waiting to speak to him and are following a definite line of inquiry.