Police blamed for body being shredded

A mother told an inquest that Dutch police who saw her son’s body floating in an Amsterdam canal in front of them failed to act and as a result his body was subsequently shredded by a barge propeller.

The inaction of Dutch police meant that the family of Paul Nolan-Miralles, aged 36, from Clonsilla, Dublin, were forced to spend three days searching for his body parts, Dublin Coroner’s Court heard.

A photographer who had lived in Amsterdam for 10 years, Mr Nolan-Miralles went missing in the early hours of Apr 13 last year after drinks at the Hard Rock Café, where he had been working. The alarm was raised later that day but under Dutch law a person is only considered missing after 48 hours.