A murder inquiry is under way after a woman was discovered with stab wounds in an apartment close to Dublin city centre.
The dead woman was named by sources as Skaidrite Valdgeima (34), a married mother of three from Latvia.
She moved to Ireland more than a decade ago and had been living in Blessington, Co Wicklow. Recently she had been working for a Dublin-based company specialising in translation.
A man was arrested following the discovery in a block at Bonham Street in the Liberties area early on Wednesday.
Gardaí were called to the property at 3.40am, they discovered the woman, who was in her 30s, with injuries to her body.
Ms Valdgeima was taken to St James’s Hospital but was pronounced dead a short time later. A postmortem is to be carried out on the woman’s body to determine the exact cause of her death.
The man who was arrested is being held at Kevin Street Garda station under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984. It is understood the dead woman was from Latvia and that the arrested man is also from Eastern Europe.
One line on inquiry being pursued by detectives is that both parties were known to each other. A couple at the scene on Wednesday reported hearing screaming and shouting during the night.
Commotion
A man leaving the complex said there was commotion as he was leaving in the morning.
“When I came down to the reception area, there were police everywhere, and there was some blood on the floor,” he said.
Gardaí sealed-off two crime scenes as part of the inquiry, although both have since reopened. One was in place at the apartment block on Bonham Street, while the second was on nearby Bridgefoot Street.
Just after 9.30am, members of the Garda Technical Bureau arrived to carry out a forensic examination of the apartment where the fatal stabbing is alleged to have happened.
The apartment complex where the incident occurred was described by locals as student accommodation. A number of tourists were also observed coming and going on Wednesday.
The complex is affiliated with Trinity College Dublin. It is listed on the accommodation section of Trinity’s website, with rooms advertised from €250 per week for a 40-week occupancy.
Investigations into the incident are ongoing.
