Gardaí probe fatal Christmas party stabbing

GARDAÍ in Tipperary have launched an investigation into the circumstances of the violent death of a man at a Christmas party in Nenagh early yesterday.

The body of a 29-year-old male was discovered in the hallway an apartment at Summerhill, Nenagh, at around 3.20am in suspicious circumstances.

It is believed the victim, a Lithuanian national, suffered fatal stab wounds to the neck in the course of an altercation with another foreign national.

Local gardaí arrived on the scene after an emergency call to the Garda control centre alerted them to the incident.

They discovered the victim being treated for serious injuries by members of an ambulance crew who had already arrived at the apartment.

However, the man died a short time later at the scene and his body remained in the apartment for several hours as members of the Garda Technical Bureau carried out a forensic examination of the apartment throughout yesterday.

The three-storey building at Summerhill, which is divided into a number of apartments, is just metres from the town centre and the local Catholic and Church of Ireland churches.

The dead man, who has not yet been named, was an employee of AIBP Meats, a meat processing factory on the outskirts of the town. It is believed he has lived in Ireland for a number of years.

Another man who was also injured during the row was being treated in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.

It is expected he will be questioned by gardaí about the incident as soon as he is deemed to have recovered sufficiently from his wounds.

It is understood a number of people had attended a party in the apartment to celebrate the Christmas holidays.

Local sources indicated that they had been drinking all night before the argument broke out.

State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy conducted an initial inspection of the body at the apartment yesterday morning before it was removed to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick for a formal postmortem yesterday afternoon.

Although no arrests were made, Garda sources indicated they were confident of identifying all people present in the house at the time of the fatal incident.

The death is the second fatal stabbing of a foreign national to take place in Nenagh following the death of Ukrainian national Alexey Pekelman at a house in the Coach Yard area of the town in September 2007.

A Latvian man subsequently faced criminal charges relating to the death.