GARDAÍ WERE last night questioning a 24-year-old man in relation to the fatal stabbing of a man at a house in Waterford city in the early hours of yesterday.
A man, named locally as Patrick Murphy (27), died after being stabbed a number of times at 42 The Glen, a private house, at about 5.30am.
A suspect was arrested shortly after the attack and was being detained in Waterford in relation to the incident throughout yesterday.
The scene was cordoned off pending technical examination by members of the Garda Technical Bureau.
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy carried out a postmortem at Waterford Regional Hospital in the afternoon.
Gardaí were carrying out door-to-door enquiries around The Glen.
Mr Murphy’s girlfriend, speaking at the scene, said her mother is “scarred” after watching her daughter’s boyfriend “die on the floor” in the house.
Louise Quigley (19) said Mr Murphy – a father to one-year-old infant Abbey – who lives in Piltown in nearby south Kilkenny, was attacked as he slept on a couch at her sister’s house.
An assailant got into the house at about 5.30am and apparently attacked Mr Murphy before going upstairs to stab another woman, Amy Quigley (22), a sister to Louise.
Then the attacker went back downstairs and stabbed Mr Murphy again, before leaving the house, said Louise Quigley.
Speaking at the scene of the crime she said: “[The attacker] stabbed him when he was asleep on the couch in my sister Amy’s house. Me and Patrick had a row and I went off so he went up to my mother’s house in [nearby] Glen Cottage and he had a few drinks on him.
“But he had nowhere to stay so my sister Amy said he could sleep on her couch. My mother’s devastated because she saw him dying in front of her.”
Ms Quigley described how her sister Amy heard a scream and then a banging, “so [she] went down and saw Paddy on the floor”.
She said the attacker stabbed Amy in the leg, while she was holding two of the children.
The sisters’ mother, Esther Quigley, was contacted and telephoned for an ambulance. The ambulance men were talking to her. “They were telling her to put towels there but it was no good.”
Amy Quigley was last night being treated in hospital for injuries that gardaí said are “not life threatening”. Louise Quigly described Mr Murphy as a “caring and loving” man who was “always happy”. The pair had been seeing each other for four months.
