No charges yet in Christmas murder

Community still ‘in shock’ after horror of Clanbrassil Terrace murder

By Ken Powell

FIVE WEEKS later, Clanbrassil Street residents have voiced concern that no charges have been brought in relation to the St Stephen’s night murder of Richard Temple.

Richard Temple, 22, of Rathsallagh Grove, Shankhill, Co Dublin, was stabbed in the throat with a hollow steel bar at Clanbrassil Terrace, off Clanbrassil St, at around 4 am on December 27 last, and was pronounced dead at St James’s Hospital less than an hour later.

He had been walking with two friends when they met two other young men, with whom "words were exchanged", according to gardai. One of the two men is said, by sources who knew the victim, to have "gone berserk" as he attacked Mr Temple and both his friends.

A local man in his early twenties was arrested within hours of the incident, but he was released the following day without charge. Detectives say they are still completing a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A Clanbrassil St resident who was one of the first onto the murder scene said: "It was like a nightmare and a horror film rolled into one. I’m 60 years old, born and reared in this neighbourhood, and I never came across anything like this before." A woman said: "Nothing like this ever happened on this street before. I couldn’t sleep for three nights after it. The kids around here are still terribly upset about it. Two vans filled with local young people went out to the funeral in Shankhill even though they didn’t know the young lad; they just went out of respect for his family.

"Until someone has been taken in for the murder, we cannot feel safe on our own streets. The young people around here are still in shock. I’m a religious woman, but if I got my hands on whoever did it I’d string them up myself.

"A garda source said St Stephen’s night features "plenty of devilment" annually, in Dublin and elsewhere. Among other crimes committed in the south inner city that night were a burglary and a theft from a car boot, both of which occurred on nearby Vernon Street shortly before the stabbing incident.