Gardai in Galway investigating the murder of a Connemara schoolgirl have appealed for public information in an attempt to piece together the victim's movements in Carraroe at the weekend.
The last confirmed sighting of Siobhan Hynes, a Leaving Certificate pupil from Leitir Moir, was at about 12.45 a.m. in Carraroe on Sunday. Her body was found washed up on the shoreline at Tismeain, some two miles from Carraroe village, at 3.20 p.m.
Preliminary results from the post-mortem were inconclusive, and further tests are being carried out over the next few days.
Supt Jim Sugrue of Salthill Garda station, who is leading the investigation, said it had been established that Siobhan parted from her friends and said she was going to a chip shop in Carraroe's main street. She was with a group from Leitir Moir who were in Carraroe on Saturday night.
It is believed that the schoolgirl never arrived at the chip shop. When she failed to return home on Sunday, the alarm was raised and a search was initiated. Her parents, Andy and Brid Hynes, live in Sconse, Leitir Moir, a community of about 250 households, where her father works as a carpenter.
Siobhan's body was found at Tismeain by a man walking his dogs on Sunday afternoon.
Fifty gardai have been conducting house-to-house inquiries and have been searching the shoreline at Tismeain. Two parallel roads leading to the coast are also being examined.
Supt Sugrue said the detectives were attempting to interview everyone who had been in Carraroe on Saturday night, but this was a "mammoth task", given the number of people socialising there at the weekend.
Siobhan was in a class of 97 Leaving Certificate pupils at Scoil Chuimsitheach Chiaraain, a comprehensive with some 420 pupils on the roll. It serves a 50-mile radius in south Connemara, including Leitir Moir, Gorumna and Leitir Meallain to the south-west.
Heartbroken school-friends received counselling at the school earlier this week, and there is considerable bewilderment and anguish within the south Connemara Gaeltacht.
The tragedy comes just a year after the unsolved murder of Ms Eileen Costello-O'Shaughnessy (47), a taxi-driver, who was found dead in a lane-way off the Tuam road on November 30th last year.
A supermarket employee, Mr Malcolm Shaughnessy (22), was stabbed to death in an altercation in Galway city last August bank holiday weekend.
The incident room for the investigation of Siobhan Hynes's death is at Carraroe Garda station, telephone (091) 595565. Anyone with information is asked to contact this number, or to phone any Garda station.
