A 38-YEAR-OLD woman died in a fire early yesterday in her bedroom at a house in Ballymote, Co Sligo.
She was named as Aoife Dalton, who lived at Marren Park in the town.
Neighbours were awakened when they heard her boyfriend, John Walsh, who lives at another address, banging at the front door of the end-of-terrace two-storey house shortly before 5.50am.
One neighbour said: “He could see smoke smouldering and he was calling out ‘Are you in there, if you are, get out’.”
Mr Walsh, who is in his 40s and has his own accommodation opposite the town’s Garda station, smashed the door glass in as he desperately tried to save Ms Dalton, who lived in Ballymote for six years but was a native of the Tralee area of Co Kerry.
Mr Walsh told gardaí he was driven back by thick smoke. He told them he was forced by the smoke to jump 20ft from a top-floor window.
Mr Walsh, a native of Sligo town who has lived in Ballymote for a number of years, was in Sligo General Hospital yesterday under treatment for smoke inhalation and cuts to his head.
Both Ms Dalton and Mr Walsh were unemployed.
The dead woman’s body was removed from the house to the hospital, where State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy carried out a postmortem later yesterday.
Emergency services were alerted by a neighbour. Garda forensic detectives sealed off the scene for examination.
Insp Colm Nevin, who is in charge of the investigation, said: “The woman was alone in the house and the fire was confined to her bedroom.”
The incident, he said, “seems to have been a tragic accident”.