Gardaí have known for over two months that a nurse wanted for murder in Florida has been living in Dublin but have been unable to arrest him because of delays in the extradition process, a Florida police detective said yesterday.
Oliver O'Quinn (27) has been charged with second-degree murder after allegedly injecting a lethal drug into a woman with whom he had an infatuation.
Mr O'Quinn tried to join the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) after fleeing to Dublin on December 27th, but the INO was alerted by Det Michael Douglas in Gainesville, Florida.
Mr O'Quinn is accused of injecting a fatal dose of a surgical anaesthetic into Gainesville student Michelle Herndon (24), after promising he was giving her a drug to cure migraine. Police claim he became angry with Ms Herndon after she announced her engagement.
The US department of justice's extradition section and the victim's family have expressed frustration with the slow pace of the Irish extradition system. Det Douglas said yesterday that he was told by the US department of justice that its last 18 extradition requests to Ireland had been rejected.
Mr O'Quinn has been known to write to his ex-wife from Dublin, using the Irish-language spelling for his address on McCormack Street in Dublin 7. Police say flight records show Mr O'Quinn fled to Ireland on December 27th after police began to close in following the November 10th death of Ms Herndon.
He first lived in a youth hostel and has been using a city centre café to send e-mails to his family in Tennessee.
Det Douglas said gardaí had been "eyeballing" Mr O'Quinn for the last month but have been unable to arrest him. Det Douglas said he had read the US-Ireland extradition treaty and could not understand why so many cases were being held up.
Autopsy results showed Ms Herndon died of a lethal dose of propofol, an anaesthetic used at Shands Hospital in Gainesville where Mr O'Quinn worked. He is alleged to have been infatuated with Ms Herndon, a personal fitness trainer and University of Florida student.
In November, she allowed Mr O'Quinn to give her a mild migraine injection at her home, not knowing that she was being injected with a powerful anaesthetic, police allege.
Ms Herndon, a member of Friendship Baptist Church in Live Oak, had planned to join the Peace Corp and marry her fiancé, Jason Dearing.