Gardaí last night launched a murder inquiry following the death of a 47-year-old Brazilian man whose body was found with knife wounds in a flat in Charleville in north Cork.
Alberto Do Prado de Oliveira was found with a cut to the throat in the living room of a first floor flat at Main Street shortly after 10pm on Thursday night after gardaí were called to the premises by a number of Brazilians living in the building.
Mr de Oliveira had been drinking with three other people when an incident occurred. Gardaí called a local doctor but Mr de Oliveira was pronounced dead at the scene.
The area was cordoned off and gardaí under Supt Barry McPolin of Mallow Garda station called in the State Pathologist and technical experts from the Garda Technical Bureau in Dublin. Mr de Oliveira's body remained at the house overnight and the scene was preserved for Garda technical experts to carry out an examination before Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster arrived at 2pm yesterday.
Mr de Oliveira's body was removed shortly after 3pm and brought to Cork University Hospital for a postmortem which found that the wound to his neck and a defensive wound on his arm were consistent with him being attacked.
Following the discovery of Mr de Oliveira's body, three people who had been drinking with him and two others who had been living in a second floor flat all accompanied gardaí to Mallow Garda station voluntarily.
Gardaí, who had earlier recovered a boning knife from the scene, also confiscated items of clothing from those who were with Mr de Oliveira at the time for forensic and technical examination. A married father of three, Mr de Oliveira had been working as a boner at Galtee Meats in Charleville for the past 2½ years and had been joined four months ago by his wife, Sueli (45), who works in a local Italian restaurant. The couple had been living in a rented flat just across the street from where Mr Oliveira's body was found and Ms de Oliveira was working in the restaurant when she learned of her husband's death. Yesterday she was being comforted by Brazilian friends.
The couple's three sons, two of whom are in their twenties and one of whom is in his late teens, are understood to have stayed in Brazil when their parents moved to Ireland, living with family relations in the de Olivera's home town of Anapolis in Goias State in central Brazil.
Yesterday, Mr de Oliveira's death was greeted with shock among the 120 strong Brazilian community in Charleville, with one woman, Sonia Correira, saying that Mr de Oliveira was a very quiet man who was well liked. "Everyone here is very sad at the news," she said.