Children were at home when woman murdered at Dublin house

A woman murdered in a suspected stabbing attack in her home in north Dublin has been named locally as mother of two Anna Mooney.

Her remains were found in the kitchen of her home on Kilbarrack Road, Raheny, Dublin 5, after gardaí were called there in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The dead woman’s two children were in the house when their mother was fatally attacked. A man in his 50s who was at the scene when gardaí arrived was arrested on suspicion of murder. He was detained under section four of the Criminal Justice Act.

He was still being questioned by murder detectives on Thursday night and was known to Ms Mooney, a married woman in her 40s originally from Ukraine. She had gone back to her homeland for a time since the invasion by Russia in February 2022 but had lived in Ireland for up to 20 years.

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[ Man arrested after woman found dead in Dublin house ]

The man arrested, a businessman and chief suspect for the murder, can be questioned for up to 24 hours without charge. Gardaí were following a definite line of inquiry and were not seeking anyone else as part of their ongoing investigation.

They believe a dispute broke out in the house before midnight and resulted in Ms Mooney being fatally attacked in the early hours. While her children – a girl aged 16 years and a boy aged eight years – were in the house, it was unclear if they witnessed the fatal attack on their mother.

However, gardaí trained in specialist interview techniques, including specifically for interviewing minors about violent crimes, were part of the murder investigation team based in Raheny Garda station. Gardaí were also conducting door-to-door inquiries.

The scene was sealed off immediately when gardaí arrived at about 1am on Thursday, with the suspect arrested and the children, now being cared for by members of their extended family, taken to safety.

Ms Mooney’s remains were left in situ overnight at the house, a small bungalow close to the junction of Kilbarrack Road and Kilbarrack Avenue. A pathologist from the Office of the State Pathologist examined her remains at the scene on Thursday morning before they were removed at about 12.30pm for full postmortem. That examination was expected to show the victim died of injuries resulting from a violent attack.

However, Garda sources said it was immediately clear the dead woman had been attacked and the results of the postmortem were not required for the Garda inquiry to be given the status of a murder investigation.