Gardaí are expected to formally open a murder investigation this afternoon following the receipt of the results of a postmortem on the body of a 32-year-old man, who died after being stabbed in the neck in Cork on Wednesday night.
Investigators requested the services of the State Pathologist’s Office on Friday afternoon following the death of Jason Butler at Cork University Hospital where he had been treated in the intensive care unit after being attacked by another man on the Grand Parade on Wednesday night.
State Pathologist, Dr Sally Ann Collis travelled from Dublin to Cork and began her postmortem on Mr Butler’s remains at around 9.30am on Saturday and completed her postmortem around lunch hour. Gardaí say that they are not releasing the results of her examination for operational reasons.
Mr Butler was with another man and woman near the Daunt Square end of the Grand Parade on Wednesday evening when the incident happened at around 7.40pm.
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A doctor and a nurse happened to be in the area and tended to Mr Butler and members of the Garda Armed Support Unit were quickly on the scene and they too assisted in trying to stabilise Mr Butler’s condition.
The emergency services were alerted and paramedics from the National Ambulance Service arrived and worked for 30 minutes on Mr Butler before taking him to Cork University Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.
Mr Butler remained in a critical but stable condition in the Intensive Care Unit at CUH throughout Thursday, but his condition began to deteriorate in the early hours of Friday morning and he died around 1pm.
Gardaí took a number of witness statements from people and have begun harvesting CCTV footage from a number of commercial premises in the area.
Gardaí have renewed their appeal for any witnesses to the assault to come forward and they particularly want to speak to any road users who were in the Grand Parade or Daunt Square areas between 7.15pm and 8pm on Wednesday night.
They are particularly anxious to speak to any motorists or pedestrians who may have camera footage (including dash cam footage) and they have asked any such witnesses to contact investigators at an incident room set up at the Bridewell Garda station on 021-4943330.
It’s understood that garda technical experts recovered a broken bottle at the scene and it has been sent for a forensic examination.
Originally from Midleton in east Cork, Mr Butler, who is survived by his siblings, Anne-Marie, Shane and James, was unemployed and lived at Deerpark House on Friar’s Walk in Cork city, a house run by the charity, Depaul Ireland to provide support services for people to move from homelessness.
A 29-year-old man has already been brought before the courts and charged with assault causing harm to Mr Butler and after gardaí objected to bail, Judge Olann Kelleher remanded the man in custody to appear again on the assault charge at Cork District Court on June 22nd by video link.
