Gardaí in Co Cork are investigating the deaths of nine-year-old twin boys found with stab wounds at their home in north Cork.
Their older brother was found dead some two hours later in an apparent suicide.
The bodies of Tom and Paddy O’Driscoll were found with stab wounds by a younger sibling when he returned home to the family’s bungalow at Deerpark on the Limerick Road in Charleville at 5pm yesterday.
It is understood the boy shouted through a hedge to a neighbour telling him that his older twin brothers had been killed. The neighbour, accompanied by two other men, entered the O’Driscoll home where they found the bodies.
The bodies of both boys were in a bedroom and it was evident they had been stabbed. The neighbours then immediately notified gardaí.
Emergency services were also called but both boys were pronounced dead at the scene.
Garda attention then turned to the whereabouts of the boys’ older brother, Jonathan – in his early 20s – and a major search operation was launched throughout north Cork, with gardaí searching for his black Toyota Corolla.
However, gardaí found the body of Jonathan O’Driscoll at about 7pm beside the Awbeg river on the outskirts of Buttevant. It appeared that he had taken his own life.
The parents of the dead boys, Tom and Helen O’Driscoll, had been in Kilmallock yesterday afternoon when the tragedy began to unfold.
Comforted by relatives
They were last night being comforted by relatives outside the family home.
Gardaí at Mallow Garda station began an investigation and requested the services of the State Pathologist to examine the bodies of the twins and their older sibling.
Last night gardaí were preserving the scene at the bungalow in Charleville where the bodies were expected to remain at the scene overnight before a pathologist can carry out preliminary examinations.
Jonathan O’Driscoll’s body was removed from the riverside in Buttevant last night.
Garda technical experts are expected to begin forensic examination of both scenes today following the removal of the bodies for postmortem examinations at Cork University Hospital.
Gardaí have yet to formally declare that they would treat the deaths of the twins as murder but privately gardaí are satisfied that what they are investigating is a double murder followed by a suicide.
Gardaí last night recovered two knives from the river near where Jonathan O’Driscoll’s body was found and are examining them to establish if they were the weapons used in the killing of his brothers.
