Postmortem due on body found in Cork slurry pit

A postmortem to take place on Friday is expected to confirm that a body found in a slurry pit at a Co Cork farm is that of a man who disappeared just before Christmas.

The body of the man was removed from the slurry pit a farm in at Rahaniskey off the main Cork to Whitechurch Road at around 8.30pm last night by members of Cork City Fire Brigade.

It took firefighters using breathing apparatus almost three hours to retrieve the body from over two metres of slurry in the tank as they had to be careful of toxic fumes from the tank.

Gardaí were alerted at about 4.30pm on Friday afternoon after the farmer made the discovery when drawing slurry from the pit on his farm approximately 7 kilometres north of Cork city.

A post-mortem on Friday by Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Margaret Bolster at CUH is expected to confirm the man’s identity and establish the exact cause of the man’s death.

Gardaí refused to be drawn on the identity of the deceased pending the postmortem and formal identification but they believe it to be 31-year-old Diarmuid Twomey.

Mr Twomey went missing in the early hours of December 20th when he failed to return home to Carrignavar village where he and his partner Ciara Byrne live with their two young children.

The couple had been attending an 18th birthday party for Mr Twomey’s nephew in Bishopstown in Cork city but left it to visit a relative of Mr Twomey’s in Gurranabraher.

They left the relative’s house on Templeacre Avenue in Gurranabraher at about 2.30am and walked along Knockfree Avenue in Fair Hill where Ms Byrne caught a taxi home.

According to Ms Byrne, Mr Twomey had not been feeling well and said that he would follow on and make his own way home to Carrignavar some 12km north of the city.

Mr Twomey was seen by a taxi driver walking on the main Cork to Whitechurch road about 1km from Whitechurch village at around 4.20am on December 20th.

A man fitting his description was then seen about 2.5km from Whitechurch village walking back towards Cork by another taxi driver at 5.20am and this was the last sighting of him.

Mr Twomey’s phone was found at 11am on December 20th about 100 metres from this last sighting of him on the main Whitechurch Road and near where the human remains were found on Thursday.