Gardaí ‘keeping all avenues open’ in probe

A GARDA technical team will continue to carry out a forensic examination of the firebombed house in Cork which claimed two lives of a young woman and her five-year-old nephew.

It is expected that preliminary investigations could take up to two days. A car found burned out nearby is also being forensically examined. Gardaí have said they “are keeping an open mind” as to whether it is linked to the attack.

Door-to-door inquiries began yesterday afternoon and gardaí are believed to be examining CCTV footage from nearby businesses.

A 22-year-old man, believed to be known to the family, was arrested in Cork city yesterday in connection with the incident. He is being held at the Bridewell Garda station on suspicion of arson under section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act.

A Garda spokesman said the force was “keeping all avenues open” in the investigation.

“A person has been arrested in connection with the incident. Members of our technical team are forensically examining the house. A postmortem on the victims will also be carried out. However, at this stage we are keeping all avenues open in terms of the investigation,” he said.

Helena O’Dwyer, 25, and her young nephew Ryan O’Dwyer were sleeping in an upstairs room of the house in Nutley Avenue, Mahon, when it was firebombed in the early hours of Easter Sunday.

Helena’s parents Joe and Helena Snr and her sister Dawn were in the house at the time of the attack. Three other children were also present.

The six family members who managed to escape the blaze were taken to Cork University and Mercy Hospitals where they were treated for shock and smoke inhalation.

Five-year-old Ryan is survived by his mother Josephine, who was not in the house when the blaze broke out. The little boy was a junior infants pupil at nearby Holy Cross National School in Avenue Des Rennes in Mahon.

His aunt Helena O’Dwyer was described locally as a friendly outgoing woman who was inseparable from her five-year-old daughter Courtney, who was in the house at the time of the fire, but survived the attack.

The deaths of Helena and Ryan are not the first tragedies to have hit the O’Dwyer family in recent years. Joe and Helena Snr lost a 14-year-old son, William O’Dwyer, in a car accident on the Monahan Road in 2005.