Gardai in Galway have a initiated a full-scale murder investigation, following the discovery of the body of a 17-year-old Connemara schoolgirl on a foreshore near Carraroe on Sunday.
Post-mortem results last night on Ms Siobhan Hynes of Sconse, Leitir Moir, were described as "inconclusive" by gardai, and further tests are to be carried out. The National Criminal Bureau of Investigations (NCBI) is now assisting Co Galway-based detectives in the murder hunt and an incident room has been set up at Carraroe Garda station: telephone (091)595102. The assistance of the public is being sought.
A Garda spokesman said no further comment could be made on the post-mortem, carried out by Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Marie Cassidy, "for operational reasons". The examination was conducted yesterday at University College Hospital, Galway.
Tismeain, where an's Ms Hynes's body was found, is two miles south of Carraroe. Gardai searched for clues among the weed-strewn rocks yesterday.
"Quiet", "good looking", from a "classy family", and "you'd think this was the safest place for her to be" were just some of the comments of stunned residents as the news shocked the Gaeltacht community that stretches west from Carraroe.
House-to-house inquiries began yesterday morning. an It was in Ms Hynes failed to arrive home in the early hours of Sunday after a group from Leitir Moir, including her older sister, spent Saturday night out in Carraroe 12 miles away.
Ms Hynes was seen outside a disco and there were confused reports yesterday about her movements afterwards. Supt Mick Curley of Clifden, who is heading the investigation, said it had been established that she did not go into the disco and was last seen between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m.
When she failed to return home on Sunday the alarm was raised. Her fully clothed body was found on rocks beside a beach at Tismeain by a man walking his dogs shortly before 4 p.m. on Sunday. Because of tidal factors, the body was removed by gardai and taken to the hospital.
Ms Hynes's parents, Andy and Brid Hynes, live in Sconse, Leitir Moir - a community of about 250 households where her father works as a carpenter. Acquaintances spoke yesterday of "lovely people from a lovely home".
The middle child among three girls, an had been due to sit her Ms Hynes was in the Leaving Certificate class at Scoil Chuimsitheach Chiarain. Teachers yesterday counselled her classmates and a Mass was given by the school chaplain, Father Peadar O Conghaile.
Mr Mairtin O Conghaile, the school principal, said pupils were still coming to terms with the death. "We were advised by the Department of Education to give as much counselling as we could ourselves, and that is what we have been doing for most of the day," he said.
Ms Hynes was in the second of four Leaving Cert streams, comprising 97 pupils among a total roll-call of 420. About half of the school's students are from "na noileain", the peninsula of Leitir Moir, Gorumna and Leitir Meallain, and the comprehensive school serves communities within a 50-mile radius of south Connemara. Some 90 per cent of those who sit their Leaving Certificate go on to third-level education.
Father Michael Brennan, parish priest in Leitir Moir, said an Ms Hynes personally, as he was new to the parish. However, the family were well known and liked, and people were very shocked.
A post-mortem will be carried out today on the body of a 35-year-old man found in a flat in Dundalk. It is thought he died 24 hours earlier. There was no sign of a break-in or a struggle. A Garda spokesman said the man was married with two children but separated from his wife.
A man in his 50s was found dead in his home in Urlingford, Co Kilkenny, at lunchtime yesterday. The State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison, will carry out a post-mortem today. Gardai said initial reports suggested the death was not suspicious.
