Gardaí following 'strong line of inquiry' in relation to Mallow murder

Detectives have identified a number of people they want to talk to about her death.

Gardaí launched a murder investigation on Saturday after an autopsy on Ms Canty, 31, confirmed she died violently.

The preliminary findings of the autopsy are not being released for operational reasons.

But it is understood that the post mortem examination, which was performed by assistant state pathologist, Dr Margot Bolster, at the city morgue at Cork University Hospital on Saturday morning, confirmed that Ms Canty suffered a fatal stab would to her upper body and that she did not die as a result of self-inflicted injuries as had been suggested by initial reports to the emergency services on Friday morning.

The alarm was raised around noon on Friday that a woman has suffered self inflicted injuries at an apartment in Mallow.

Paramedics rushed to the three-storey Belfry complex on Bridewell Lane near the town centre where Ms Canty had been renting and found her unresponsive lying on the floor of her top floor flat, with serious injuries to her upper body.

Efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

When it became clear at the scene that Ms Canty’s injuries did not match those that had been initially described to the emergency services, gardaí immediately treated the death as suspicious.

They sealed off the scene for a full forensic and technical examination by forensic experts from the Garda Technical Bureau, and requested the services of the state pathologist, assigning all the resources of a murder inquiry to the case from the outset.

And following a review of the preliminary findings of the autopsy on Saturday, a formal decision was made to upgrade the investigation to a murder inquiry.

While it is understood that gardaí have identified at least two persons of interest who may be able to help them with their enquiries, they have appealed for witnesses to contact them and are seeking any available camera footage, including dashcam recordings, from those who were in the vicinity of Bridewell Lane between 9pm on Thursday and 10am on Saturday to contact them at an incident room at Mallow Garda Station on 022 31450.

They have been conducting door-to-door enquiries in the area, and have also harvested CCTV footage from a number of premises in the town centre, in a bid to trace Ms Canty’s last known movements, and to identify any persons she was with in the hours before her death.

Ms Canty, who was originally from Kinsale, was a mother to two young children. She would have turned 32 on Monday. She had been living in the flat in Mallow for several months.

She led a troubled and often chaotic life, and was known to gardaí, having amassed more than 100 convictions for offences including theft, drug possession, robbery, burglary and public order.

Friends have been paying tribute to her on social media today, with one person describing her as “one of the nicest, harmless girls” you could meet.