The body of a man has been found at a waste collection facility in Dublin having apparently being collected on a refuse round and then later spotted at the waste depot after being delivered there.
Gardaí said the discovery of the deceased’s remains was made early on Friday. The alarm was raised immediately by staff at the Panda recycling centre in Ballymount, Dublin 24.
The area has been sealed off and gardaí are trying to determine the cause of the man’s death, including whether there was any evidence of a previous assault, or if he may have been sleeping among large industrial bins of refuse or recycling that were emptied into a truck and taken to Ballymount.
Garda sources said initial indications are the man may have been a rough sleeper and that he was killed when a large industrial bin he was sleeping in was tipped into a truck. However, the precise manner of his death had yet to be confirmed.
Garda sources said it would be crucial to determine the time of the man’s death and whether it was brought about at the time the bin he was in was collected or if he was already deceased at that time.
Part of the investigation involves tracking the route of the truck that carried the man’s remains into the waste facility. It was hoped that strand of the investigation would pinpoint where he entered the truck and may lead to other information about his last movements.
“At approximately 6.40am this morning gardaí were notified,” the Garda said of the discovery of the man’s remains at the commercial premises.
“The body of a white male was examined at the scene and has now been removed to the Dublin City Mortuary where a State postmortem will take place in due course. The results of the postmortem will determine the course of the investigation. The scene remains preserved and will be examined by Garda Technical Bureau.”
The discovery of remains in waste facilities is highly unusual but not unprecedented.
In 2013 the remains of Henryk Piotrowsk, a 43-year-old Czech man, were discovered in the Ballymount facility. It was determined he was sleeping rough in an industrial bin and was alive when he entered the back of the truck as the bin was collected. He suffocated as he was crushed by the mechanisms in the back of the truck.
In 2014, partial remains were found at Thornton’s Recycling Plant, Killeen Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin. They were later confirmed as the remains of 37-year-old father of seven Mark Burke. The Dubliner was last seen in Dun Laoghaire and a post mortem confirmed he had been murdered.
His killing remains unsolved, though it is suspected he was murdered and his remains concealed in refuse in south Dublin, which was then collected by truck and brought to the Ballyfermot waste facility where the discovery was made.
