Gardaí believe a man found dead in a sleeping bag in Dublin’s Phoenix Park was beaten and then deliberately set on fire. The victim, who is believed to have been homeless and sleeping rough, has not yet been identified.

Garda sources said his body was so badly damaged he would only be identified through dental records or DNA sampling and that any identification papers he may have had on him would have been destroyed.

A postmortem by State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy last evening found he had been beaten and then set on fire.

The Garda investigation was upgraded from a suspicious death probe to a murder inquiry.

Garda Supt Dave Taylor said while members of the homeless community were often reluctant to contact gardaí or admit that they were homeless, anyone assisting the inquiry would be dealt with in confidence and sensitively.

The spot where the man died is popular with rough sleepers, although there was nobody else around when the first gardaí arrived on the scene early yesterday morning.

Supt Taylor said they were particularly keen to speak to anyone who may have been in the area from 4pm on Thursday up to 1.30am yesterday.

“We’re also appealing to anyone who may have a friend, relative or associate who is homeless or has that lifestyle and they haven’t seen that person in the past 24 hours to come forward to us,” he said.



Fireball

A Garda patrol car passing through the Phoenix Park just before 1.30am saw a fireball in a wooded area metres off Chesterfield Avenue at the junction with Wellington Road. The spot is just off a popular jogging path and about 200 metres from Garda Headquarters.

The gardaí at the scene tried to intervene and called Dublin Fire Brigade but the man’s sleeping bag and body were burning intensely by the time the fireball was spotted.

The man’s body was left at the secured scene overnight and a preliminary examination was carried out at first light by Prof Cassidy.

It was then removed to the City Morgue in Marino. The Garda Technical Bureau spent yesterday forensically examining the area. The scene remained sealed off last night.

Detectives are hopeful the man’s identity can be established quickly so that his last movements can be traced.



Unsolved murder

The last murder to occur in the park remains unsolved.

Eugenia Bratis (50) from Romania died after being repeatedly stabbed in the upper body in the park in August 2009.

She had been travelling back and forth from Romania since 2007 and in recent times had been seen begging on O’Connell Bridge and O’Connell Street and sleeping in the park.