{"id":26833,"date":"2025-08-27T16:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T16:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/26833\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T16:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T16:18:10","slug":"garda-arrested-for-questioning-about-death-of-man-on-oconnell-st-dublin-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/26833\/","title":{"rendered":"Garda arrested for questioning about death of man on O\u2019Connell St, Dublin \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A serving Garda<\/a> member has been arrested for questioning as part of an investigation into the death of a man during an interaction with garda\u00ed in Dublin<\/a> city centre two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Dubliner Paul Butler (51) died after the incident outside the Holiday Inn on O\u2019Connell Street<\/a> in the early hours of Friday, August 15th. It is suspected he hit his head on the ground. He died in hospital four days later as a result of those injuries.<\/p>\n

Mr Butler had been approached by garda\u00ed on the street at the time of the incident, and the circumstances of his suffering a head injury have been under investigation by Fiosr\u00fa<\/a>, the Republic\u2019s police ombudsman.<\/p>\n

That inquiry, which is a criminal investigation, has now resulted in the arrest of a serving Garda member. <\/p>\n

It is understood he was arrested for questioning on Tuesday in relation to the fatal incident. The garda was questioned for several hours and has since been released without charge pending further investigation.<\/p>\n

When contacted, Fiosr\u00fa declined to offer any substantive comment on the latest development in the inquiry. <\/p>\n

\u201cFiosr\u00fa, the Office of the Police Ombudsman, is independently investigating an incident referred by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na on Friday, August 15th,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe investigation is ongoing and Fiosr\u00fa will not be making any comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Garda member arrested for questioning on Tuesday had already been suspended from duty depending the outcome of the Fiosr\u00fa inquiry into Mr Butler\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

While Mr Butler was still critically injured in hospital, the incident was referred by Garda Headquarters to Fiosr\u00fa, which investigates complaints made against garda\u00ed. Fiosr\u00fa is obliged by law to investigate any incident where a person is seriously injured or dies at or around the time they had interactions with garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

The criminal investigation into Mr Butler\u2019s death is expected to take some time. At its conclusion, a file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), as is the case when the Garda carries out criminal investigations. It will be up to the DPP to determine if there is a criminal case. <\/p>\n

It is understood the garda has denied any wrongdoing. <\/p>\n

The garda was in a patrol car with a sergeant on O\u2019Connell Street just after 4am when they spotted Mr Butler, who they suspected may have been in an intoxicated state.<\/p>\n

The garda\u00ed told investigators they approached the man after they saw him at the traffic island in the street. During this interaction, the man fell to the ground.<\/p>\n

It is not known if the garda had physical contact with Mr Butler, who was from Phibsborough<\/a>, Dublin, and formerly of Grace Park Road, Dublin. He was taken to hospital, and an on-call investigator from Fiosr\u00fa attended the scene.<\/p>\n

The incident was not captured on the Garda car\u2019s dashcam but investigators were able to obtain CCTV footage from other cameras on the street, sources said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A serving Garda member has been arrested for questioning as part of an investigation into the death of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,52,18572,18573,18,13,14,5650,5651,8030,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,12950,18575,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-26833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-dublin","12":"tag-dublin-1","13":"tag-dublin-7","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-fiosru","18":"tag-garda-ombudsman","19":"tag-garda-siochana","20":"tag-headlines","21":"tag-ie","22":"tag-ireland","23":"tag-latest-news","24":"tag-latestnews","25":"tag-main-news","26":"tag-mainnews","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-o-connell-street","29":"tag-phibsborough","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26833","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=26833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}