{"id":619091,"date":"2025-12-08T01:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T01:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/619091\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T01:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T01:47:09","slug":"murder-inquiry-under-way-after-woman-and-child-die-in-house-fire-in-co-offaly-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/619091\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder inquiry under way after woman and child die in house fire in Co Offaly | Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">A murder investigation has been launched after a 60-year-old woman and a four-year-old boy died in a fire in County Offaly in the Republic of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ireland\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ireland<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Emergency services extinguished the blaze at a house in the town of Edenderry at about 8pm on Saturday but were unable to save the woman and child.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The victims were later identified as Mary Holt and Tadhg Farrell.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Another woman in her 50s escaped the fire and is being treated in hospital with serious injuries. Postmortems were due to be carried out on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Supt Liam Geraghty confirmed that a murder investigation was under way during a press conference on Sunday, describing the crime as a \u201creckless, callous and murderous attack on a family home\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He said that the house is believed to have been attacked by \u201ca person or persons unknown at this time\u201d, and that the fire was deliberately started.<\/p>\n<p>The scene of the house fire in Edenderry, Co Offaly, in which a woman and a young boy have died. Photograph: Aisling Hyland\/PA<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Police are appealing for anyone who was in the vicinity of Castleview Park housing estate on Saturday evening to come forward with information.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Irish minister for justice, Jim O\u2019Callaghan, condemned the \u201cdeliberate callous attack\u201d on the house. \u201cThere is no place in a civilised society for such heinous violence,\u201d he said, urging any witnesses to support the police investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Local Independent Ireland councillor, Fergus O\u2019Donnell, who knew the victims, told Irish broadcaster RT\u00c9 that the whole town was \u201cabsolutely distraught\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He said: \u201cThe families are ordinary, salt of the earth people, hard working and for something that just to happen, it\u2019s just unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A murder investigation has been launched after a 60-year-old woman and a four-year-old boy died in a fire&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-619091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115681430406983561","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}