Eight arrested over Ward killing

Eight people were arrested by gardaí yesterday investigating the murder of 23-year-old Sligo man Tom Ward at Cranmore on August 13th last.

This brings to 15 the total number held in recent days in connection with the killing.

By last evening five of the seven people arrested on Monday in connection with the killing had been released. Gardaí said that a file was now being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The five men and three women arrested yesterday are being detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. They were being questioned last night at Garda stations in counties Sligo and Leitrim. They can be held for 72 hours.

Mr Ward , a member of the settled Traveller community who was married with one child, was attacked outside his parents' home at Joe McDonnell Drive, in the Cranmore estate in Sligo on 13th August.

He was pulled from his van and struck on the back of the head with a weapon, believed to be an axe.

Mr Ward, who had a two-year-old daughter, was attacked after driving the short distance from his own home in Cranmore to his parents' house. He had just left his pregnant wife at home .

Detectives believe the killing may have been linked to two confrontations which happened around Sligo hours before the murder.

One was a row between the occupants of a car and a van at a roundabout in Collooney, Co Sligo, while there was another incident in John Street in Sligo town on the same night.

The discovery of an axe and a balaclava in an abandoned Ford Focus car on the Keadue road near Sligo, was a crucial development in the investigation.