Family hope car find will solve mystery of Corkman missing for nearly 20 years
Garda divers search the water in Crosshaven, Cork following the discovery of a car believed to be linked to a person who has been missing for almost 20 years. Picture: Larry Cummins
The family and friends of a man who has been missing since 2004 hope the discovery of a car on the bed of the Owenabue river in Cork Harbour could help solve the mystery of his disappearance.
Those who knew and loved Barry Coughlan, 23, who was last seen in Crosshaven on May 1, 2004, watched in the rain on Thursday as members of the Garda Sub Aqua Unit dived on the car which was found submerged to the north-west of the village’s Hugh Coveney Pier on Wednesday.
The pier is just a few hundred metres from where Mr Coughlan was last seen.
Gardaí have not commented on the detail of the discovery but it is understood that the car on the riverbed matches the make and model of Mr Coughlan’s rust-coloured Toyota Corolla hatchback, registration 98 C 18625, and that a partial registration match has been made.
A garda spokesman stressed that investigators must follow a painstaking process before the vehicle can be searched or retrieved, and before they can establish any potential link between it and Mr Coughlan's missing persons case.
The car was recovered from the water on Thursday night, and removed to a storage facility where it will undergo a detailed forensic examination.
This area of water was the subject of a detailed and exhaustive search shortly after Mr Coughlan’s disappearance, involving boats and divers, but neither Mr Coughlan nor his car was found.
Experts in river searches pointed to an incident in March 2010, in which Krystian Mielnik, 28, drowned and another man was rescued when a car left the cross-river ferry and entered the water as it was travelling between Glenbrook near Passage West and Carrigaloe near Cobh.
Searchers in this case knew where to search but it was 10 months before the car was found. Mr Mielnik's body was never recovered.
Members of Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery (CCMPSR) unit made this latest discovery during a training exercise on Wednesday.
They were testing the unit's new €10,000 side-scanning sonar device, which sits on the side of a rib, on a stretch of water between Camden, to the east, and Drake’s Pool to the west of Crosshaven.
The scanner identified a submerged “item of interest” near the Hugh Coveney Pier at around noon. The team rescanned the area several times before going ashore to view the footage on a big screen.
CCMPSR spokesman, Christy O’Donovan, said they then decided to commit two of their divers to investigate the item.
Visibility was very poor on the bottom but the divers found a car resting on its roof, buried deep in mud and silt.
They believed the car could be linked to Mr Coughlan’s case and the CCMPSR alerted gardaí, who called in the Garda Water Unit to investigate.
Mr O’Donovan said CCMPSR members remained on the pier overnight.
“It was the least we felt we could for this family,” he said.
Gardaí also contacted Mr Coughlan’s family to tell them to expect garda activity in the area.
Mr Coughlan was last seen outside the former Moonduster Bar in Crosshaven between 1.30am and 2am on Saturday May 1.
His family say his disappearance was completely out of character.
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