HEAVY RAIN kept away the little groups of people that usually form after a Garda cordon is erected following a crime.
But it didn’t dissuade the children who came and went as gardaí preserved the scene at Dublin’s Blackhorse Avenue where the discovery of a woman’s body in a luggage bag was made at about 8.30am yesterday.
A small tent was erected at St David’s Terrace to keep the bag from public view before it was removed to Beaumont hospital. Gardaí made door-to-door inquiries.
The nearby XtraMart convenience store had a steady stream of gardaí, reporters and neighbours all day. Safida Begum said gardaí were there when she went to open her shop at 9am. “It’s really shocking,” she said. “It’s nice here. Six or seven years we are here and they are nice people.”
Residents described the area as mixed, with some long-time residents, as well as newcomers who are mostly renting accommodation in the red-bricked houses.
Damien Carey moved in six months ago and had never encountered any trouble. “The worst I’ve seen is kids throwing snowballs with rocks. They don’t even kick over the bins so something like this is quite shocking.”
He heard the news from the people he lives with. “When you stop to think about it it’s really sad.”
Some had not heard the news until they stepped outside their homes and saw the Garda cordon blocking off a short section of the street near the North Circular Road junction close to McKee Army barracks.
“What has happened this morning?” asked a woman with a foreign accent as she walked under the Garda cordon after leaving her home. On being told that a woman’s body had been found, she looked shocked and said: “I never saw what was going on.”
Lauren Kelly heard the news from a friend who told her, “Open your window, look out on St David’s Terrace. There’s a body after being found.”
Her thoughts were with the victim but also with the person who made the discovery. “It’s awful. God help whoever found the person. But who’d think to look in a suitcase?”
James, who preferred not to give his surname, said he saw the aftermath of a crash when he was coming in from a party in the early hours of yesterday morning and thought that was why the Garda cordon had been erected.
“I think it was about four o’clock or it could have been a bit earlier.” He had lived in the area for 27 years and had never heard of any trouble.
But an eastern European couple leaving a flat on the corner of Blackhorse Avenue shook their heads when asked if it was a quiet area.
“It’s not nice, it’s dangerous,” said the man. “I think last year or two years ago some man was shot here,” the woman added.
Another man who lives nearby, said he had heard about the grim discovery an hour earlier. “Generally it’s okay here. It’s kind of mixed.”
He said he had been mugged in the area about three years ago, at about 7pm.
He was followed back from the shop and saw the man’s shadow on the wall before he reached forward and put his arm around his neck.
“He laid me down across his knee, gently if you don’t mind, and went through my pockets. I didn’t resist, I had nothing to lose, only a few bob. But he didn’t hurt me. Very peculiar.”
He was shocked at the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the unknown woman’s body. “I didn’t hear a thing. Was she a foreign woman? It is awful. I don’t know any more about it.”
