On Sunday evening, Gardaí continued to question a father and his son about an incident at the weekend in west County Cork in which the father’s two other sons suffered serious stab wounds during a long-running family dispute over inheritance and access to property.
The incident occurred on a farm near Dunmanway at around 7pm on Saturday. After emergency services were alerted, they arrived at the scene to find two brothers, aged 35 and 32, with serious injuries. Paramedics attempted to stabilise the condition of the two men before they were taken to hospital.
One man suffered a severed artery after the alleged knife attack and was bleeding heavily. He was flown by helicopter to Cork University Hospital (CUH). The second man suffered a punctured lung in the incident and was taken to CUH by ambulance. The two injured men underwent emergency surgery on Saturday evening.
The siblings’ condition remained serious but stable on Sunday evening, and Garda sources said investigators hoped to take statements from them about Saturday’s events once doctors cleared them to be interviewed.
Gardaí arrested the injured men’s father, who is in his late 70s, and their younger brother, 31, at the scene to question them about the attacks. Both men were taken to Bandon Garda station where they were still being questioned on Sunday evening.
The crime scene at the farm near Dunmanway was cordoned off by police on Saturday and a forensic team carried out a technical examination of the area where the incident occurred. A knife believed to have been used in the stabbing was recovered and sent for forensic examination.
Investigators believe the attacks on the two brothers are the latest episode in a long-running family dispute over an inheritance that saw the three brothers become co-owners of a yard and shed adjoining a farm outside the house. It is believed that the will led to a dispute between the two sons on one side and their brother on the other.
Garda sources said one side of the dispute used padlocks to prevent the other from accessing part of the property in question, while the other side used angle grinders to break the locks and gain entry. Last month, a family member’s 4×4 was also set on fire.
