Gardaí in Limerick have launched a murder investigation into the death of a man whose body was found in a city centre flat earlier today.
The body was discovered in a building on Wickham Street at around 11am.
The victim has been named as 54-year-old Martin Purcell. He was a separated father of two grown up children, and had lived in the flat for about a year.
The building where the body was discovered was examined by a technical team of gardaí this afternoon.
Assistant State Pathologist Dr Khalid Jabbar also examined the interior of the building where the body was found.
He will conduct a post mortem examination on the body to establish exactly how the victim died. It is understood the victim had a number of stab wounds.
Gardaí are conducting inquiries among the residents and businesses in the street, and checking their CCTV footage to see if it can give them any clues about the movements in and out of the building earlier today, or last night.
The victim lived alone and gardaí want to establish if anyone went to the flat during the last 24 hours.
A friend of Mr Purcell, Stephanie Naughton, came to the scene this afternoon when she heard the news about his violent death. She said she was shocked beyond belief on hearing of his death.
She said he was just the loveliest, nicest man, who had no history of violence, who would do anything to help people, and she could not understand why anyone would want to hurt him.
