Body found in skip was badly marked

A MAN whose fully clothed body was found yesterday in a skip at a Limerick refuse depot may have died violently some time last week.

The body was badly marked.

A major investigation is underway and the state pathologist’s office has been contacted.

Early indications are that the man in his mid-30s was from Limerick and had been living rough.

Gardaí were last night working with staff at refuse disposal company, Mr Binman, to ascertain where the skip had been located before it was brought to the depot.

They also want to find out how long the skip was out for hire.

A number of full skips were brought into the depot yesterday morning from locations in the city and county. But indications are that the skip with the body had been brought from a city location.

The fully-clothed body was brought yesterday afternoon to Dublin city morgue where a postmortem will be carried out this morning by the state pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy.

This decision was taken due to the number of postmortems arising from violent deaths in recent days.

Martin Sheehan, who owns Mr Binman said: “Two workers were sorting through rubbish on the main tipping floor of the facility when they saw a hand and alerted a manager. The gardaí now have control of the facility.”

Mr Binman is one of the biggest refuse collection operators in the country with 20,000 customers in the Mid-West.

Supt Frank O’Brien who is heading the investigation said: “We have an idea as to the identity of the man. But that is subject to confirmation — until such time as we have done a full formal identification. We are treating this death as suspicious at the highest level, until we get the results of the postmortem. There are certain marks on the body. We are just keeping this at the highest investigation level and treating it as suspicious.”

The grim discovery was made shortly after midday at the refuse depot at Drombanna on the outskirts of the city.

Detectives from Roxboro Road Garda Station sealed off the entire area on going to the scene after the alarm was raised.

A Garda source said:

“Obviously the body was not meant to be found and whoever put it into the skip may have thought it would be brought straight to a landfill site.”

This is not the first such discovery in Limerick — the body of a new born baby was found when a skip was being emptied at a refuse depot in August 2005.

The skip had been brought from a site in Rathkeale to the depot in Broadford. The body had fallen out of a plastic wrapping. A postmortem found that the baby boy had not sustained life at birth and appeals for the mother to come forward to get medical help were unsuccessful.