Gardai have confirmed that they are treating as manslaughter the death of a man whose body was found in a refuse chute in a Cork city apartment complex on Monday evening.
Gardai have yet to formally identify the deceased but they believe that he is a 59 year old former resident of the Simon Community originally from the northside of Cork city.
Gardai are tonight trying to trace the man’s relatives and may have to use dental records, DNA evidence and possibly fingerprints to formally confirm the man’s identity.
He was found in a refuse chute at the North Gate Apartment Complex on Bachelor’s Quay at around 5.30pm on Monday by a maintenance man who went to check on the chute.
Refuse was building up in the chute and when the maintenance man went to clear the blockage, the body of the deceased, which had begun to decompose, emerged from the chute.
A post-mortem by assistant State pathologist, Dr Margot Bolster at Cork University Hospital today confirmed that the man had been the victim of an assault.
Gardaí were reluctant to release exact details of the man’s injuries for operational reasons but on foot of Dr Bolster’s findings, they upgraded their inquiry to a manslaughter investigation.
Gardaí believe from Dr Bolster’s findings that the body of the man may have been in the chute for between one and two days when he was found on Monday evening.
Garda technical experts cordoned off both the exit of the chute which is on ground floor and the opening of the chute which is on the fourth floor of the apartment complex.
The opening to the refuse chute is in a communal area and gardaí have requested residents of the adjacents apartments to vacate the building pending their investigation.
Detectives have established that the man, whom they believe is the deceased, was last seen alive on Friday evening but they are still trying to piece together his last known movements.
The man had been living in hostel accommodation but had been asked to leave following an incident and gardai are trying to establish where he had been staying in recent weeks.
According to one Garda source, the man had no known connection with the North Gate apartment complex which contains a total of 18 units in a mixture of living spaces.
Gardaí have carried out door to door inquiries with residents of the apartment complex and to date have received no report of any disturbance in the complex over the weekend.
However they believe that the man was assaulted within the complex and was then placed in the chute rather than assaulted elsewhere and brought to the complex.
Gardaí have begun examining CCTV footage from the building and adjacent premises on both Bachelors Quay and North Main Street in a bid to help them find out what happened.
They are hoping that the CCTV footage will show when exactly the man may have entered the building and what persons he may have been with at the time.
