A POSTMORTEM on the body of a man who died following an assault in Sligo last week has concluded he died from head injuries.
Prayers were said yesterday for the victim, Cyril Moran (60), at the Holy Cross Friary in Sligo, where he was a regular Mass-goer.
Mr Moran died on Sunday after receiving head, leg and arm wounds in an assault in his rented home in River Road, Cartron Point, Sligo, on Thursday.
Hours later he was driven to Sligo General Hospital, where he was dropped off and admitted himself as a patient to accident and emergency. He later slipped into a coma and a Garda investigation began.
While the postmortem, carried out yesterday by Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis, found that he died from head injuries, gardaí said details of the results were not being released yet for operational reasons.
The second of two men questioned by gardaí in connection with the assault on Mr Moran was released yesterday from Manorhamilton Garda station. The first man was released on Saturday after he was quizzed at Ballymote Garda station.
Gardaí said a file on the two men, aged 28 and 29 and both from Sligo town, was being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Dominican Fr Tim Mulcahy, of the friary in Sligo, said Mr Moran was an almost daily Mass-goer.
“He would have come to this church for most of his life and he used to read prayers from the altar. It’s a dreadful tragedy what happened to him.”
Mr Moran, who was single, was a keen pub-quiz competitor and once ran junior soccer in Sligo.
Sligo-Leitrim and District Junior Soccer League secretary Noel Kennedy recalled when Mr Moran was an avid member of the organisation.
“He was secretary of the league in the 1970s. He was a very good administrator and dedicated much of his time to the sport. He was devoted to his mother with whom he shared a house before she died. He was an extremely inoffensive man and was absolutely totally non-violent. He never deserved what happened to him.”
Following the death of his mother, a retired teacher, Mr Moran, a former factory clerk, sold the home they shared on Pearse Road, Sligo, and moved to an apartment in Riverside, Sligo, before transferring about 18 months ago to his rented house at Cartron Point.
The secretary of the Cartron Point Residents’ Association, Sheila Leyden, said: “The community is in a state of shock at this very tragic incident.
“This is a residential area and it’s not something that you expect on your own doorstep. It came as a total shock to everybody.”