{"id":22501,"date":"2025-08-25T16:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22501\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T16:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T16:22:08","slug":"man-found-dead-in-co-down-named-locally-as-murder-investigation-begins-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/22501\/","title":{"rendered":"Man found dead in Co Down named locally as murder investigation begins \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Police have opened a murder investigation after a man was found dead in Newcastle, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/down\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/down\/\">Co Down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/police-service-of-northern-ireland\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/police-service-of-northern-ireland\/\">The Police Service of Northern Ireland<\/a> (PSNI) received a report on Sunday at 10.30pm that a body had been discovered in the Slievenabrock Avenue area of the seaside town.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He has been named locally as Sean Small. It is understood he was in his early 80s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">PSNI Det Chief Insp Kerrie Foreman said she understood that the news will cause \u201cshock and concern within this close-knit community\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cLocal people will see our officers in and around the area \u2013 with cordons still in place today,\u201d she said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cOur enquiries are at an early stage and I am appealing to anyone who believes they may have information which could assist us with our investigation, any dashcam or doorbell footage to contact us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Slievenabrock is located in a quiet residential part of Newcastle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">South Down DUP MLA Diane Forsythe said many elderly people live on the street, which was a \u201cvery peaceful part\u201d of the tourist town and Mourne mountain area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThis is not the news anybody expects to wake up to on a bank holiday Monday,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThere is just a real sense of deep, deep shock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">SDLP South Down MLA Colin McGrath said the community was stunned by the death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cFor such a violent death to occur in Newcastle will understandably cause concern and I would ask people to avoid speculation and to remain calm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt is vital that the police are given every piece of information they need to carry out their investigation. Anyone who can assist should come forward without delay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Willie Clarke, a Sinn F\u00e9in councillor for Newry, Mourne and Down, councillor offered his condolences to the family of the deceased, saying it was a \u201cheartbreaking\u201d situation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThis local, tight-knit community are in shock that a murder investigation is now under way,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI would stress that people should let the police carry out their investigations and not to speculate at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have opened a murder investigation after a man was found dead in Newcastle, Co Down. The Police&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,17927,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,952,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-22501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-down","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-world","23":"tag-world-news","24":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}