Man murdered after bonfire party
Jamie Lonergan, aged 21, from 8 Cooleens Close, Clonmel, was arrested around 10pm Thursday and brought to the local garda station. He was questioned and released without charge.
Five hours later, gardaí were called to waste ground just behind the local psychiatric hospital. There they found him lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds to his face and body. They immediately launched a murder investigation.
The victim was known to the gardaí and had one prior conviction for a minor public order offence. Gardaí have ruled out any possible connection between the death and the rape of a 12-year-old girl who was also at the bonfire. There is also no link between the attack and the discovery of another man’s remains five miles outside of the town on Friday morning.
Jamie Lonergan’s sister, Tracey, arrived at the scene of the tragedy with two other sisters yesterday morning. There are seven girls in the family; Jamie was one of two boys.
“He was only 21 on the second of April. We’ve no idea what happened, where he was last night or what he was doing. We’re just trying to come to terms with it all. We’re very shocked,” she said.
She described her brother as “a grand fella” before getting into her car and driving away.
The girls left three small bouquets a hundred yards from where their brother lay.
Until recently Mr Lonergan worked at Flancare, a logistics company in the town. He lived with his girlfriend in a flat in the town centre. It is not known why he was walking through the area, known locally as Kelly’s field, where a man and two women later found his body.
Gardaí and ambulance personnel rushed to the scene but he was already dead. It is not known whether the 21-year-old walked home alone or had been with a group at the time of the attack. Forensic teams combed the overgrown area yesterday afternoon for clues.
Shocked neighbours said the deceased had been drinking at the bonfire with up to 300 others earlier on Hallowe’en night. The bonfire was minutes away from where his blood-stained remains were found.
“He was a grand fella,” neighbour John Anthony Burns said. “He never troubled anyone. I knew him well from when he lived here and we’re all shocked by it.”
Another neighbour saw the 21-year-old at the bonfire. “He was hanging around with a group of friends. His girlfriend wasn’t with them. He’d been with her earlier on alright. He was drinking at the bonfire but he wasn’t drunk. They left and went into town. I’m not sure what time it was,” Dwaine Burns said.
The extended Lonergan family gathered outside their freshly painted, semi-detached home yesterday morning, still shocked and stunned. They were too distraught to talk and appealed to the assembled media to stay away.
Family cars were parked on the curb side. And inside, Breda and Martin Lonergan and their eight surviving children were trying to come to terms with it all.
“My own young fellas grew up with Jamie. They’d play up and down this street. But like all fellas, when they grow up and move away, you lose contact. I don’t think I saw him in months,” another neighbour said.
She’d been listening to radio reports of the attack all morning but had just found out it was her neighbour who died in the assault.
Gardaí combed the waste ground behind St Luke’s psychiatric unit for clues throughout yesterday morning. Grass on the over-grown site was waist high and dotted with large clumps of briars and other weeds.
A well-worn track through the overgrowth is often used as a short cut to Elm Park, the biggest local authority housing estate in the town.
The dead man had no connection with the area and it is not known why he would have been passing through that part of town.
His most direct route home from the bonfire on the poppy field would have been along the main road through the town.
The former factory worker’s body lay under a canvass covering in a hollow, close to a water tower. The area remained sealed off throughout the day and numerous elderly people who usually walk their dogs in the grounds were turned away. Gardaí took it in turns to patrol the area.
This is the third violent death within close proximity in the past few years. In 1996, David Nugent was stabbed to death in a field just two minutes away. Anthony Buck is serving life for the attack.
Just a year later, Frankie Daniels was battered to death behind the nearby Chadwicks store on a laneway close to town.
