Owner says it was not his job to clean fish shop freezer

THE fish shop owner who discovered the frozen corpse of a man who went missing five years ago has said it wasn’t his job to clean the large freezer where the gruesome find was made.

Owner Ali, who would only give his first name, ran to gardaí when he uncovered the frozen limbs in the storage area behind the Mermaid Fish Shop. He was shocked and yesterday revealed he was not the only one to have entered the freezer area in recent years.

It is now almost certain Patrick McCormack, 52, was killed five years ago, say gardaí, who yesterday received post-mortem details revealing a serious injury to the man’s head from an assault caused his death.

His body, with hands tied, was found in a large freezer store behind the fish shop in Galway city last week.

The shop’s owner said he was facing an inspection of his premises last week when he made the macabre find.

“I swear to God, I don’t know nothing about this thing. I went to the freezer and found this thing and went straight to the gardaí and all hell broke loose.

“It wasn’t cleaning. I had an inspection coming up and needed to do something.”

A post mortem yesterday failed to reveal the time of Mr McCormack’s death. Gardaí have pinpointed the last sighting of the 6ft man in Dublin, in mid 2002. Before that, he is thought to have rented accommodation in Galway. His Opel Vectra car was found abandoned in Shannon, Co Clare, in late 2003. Gardaí are understood to be investigating his links to the drug trade and Limerick or Galway gangs.

Supt Tom Mulcahy, who is leading the case, yesterday refused to reveal further details but added: “Everything is suggesting he was killed five years ago.”