A 26-year-old North African man has been arrested in Dublin in connection with the murder of Mary Ward, a 22-year-old mother of one from Belfast.
The suspect, who had legal status in Northern Ireland, is believed to have crossed into the Republic of Ireland shortly after the killing, evading authorities for several days before being tracked down by Gardaí.
Mary Ward’s body was discovered in her south Belfast home on Oct. 1, nearly a week after her death. She is understood to have died from multiple neck wounds on Sept. 25. Initially, police considered her death a possible suicide but a murder investigation was launched on Oct. 4 following a post-mortem.
“We initiated an investigation into the unexplained and suspicious death,” said PSNI Assistant Chief Constable David Beck. “That was a complex investigation, that involved scene examination, detailed forensics, post-mortem, which got us to the point where we were in a position to confirm that this was a murder on 4 October.”
The suspect, who had an address in Belfast, was known to the victim and had previously been arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) after she reported a violent assault just weeks before her death.
He was questioned by officers but released on police bail — a decision that will now be investigated by an independent police watchdog following a referral by the PSNI itself.
“We received a call from the victim on Sept. 4. We responded to that call within minutes, we spoke to the victim, and we recorded an interaction with the victim,” Beck told a press conference.
“On the basis of that interaction, we followed that up with an arrest of a suspect. That suspect was taken to custody and was interviewed in respect of those issues. What followed is the issue that concerns us in terms of the organizational response and, in essence, the risk assessment and decisions that were made thereafter in respect of how we dealt with that person,” he added.
The Irish Times reported that the African migrant fled across the border to the Republic of Ireland after the murder.
Gardaí, the police force in the Republic of Ireland, launched a surveillance operation after receiving intelligence that the suspect was in Dublin. He was identified on CCTV footage in a Dublin Tesco supermarket purchasing phone credit in the days following the murder, ultimately leading to his arrest.
PSNI has acknowledged that its officers had been in contact with the victim on multiple occasions in the lead-up to her murder. Tragically, this even included the day of her suspected death when she spoke with police over the phone about her assault complaint.
The suspect remains in custody in Dublin amid an ongoing investigation.
The tragic case marks the fourth killing of a woman in Northern Ireland in just six weeks, heightening concerns about violence against women in the region.
