DUBLIN (AFP) – Irish police yesterday searched a property on the country’s east coast for a missing eight-year-old boy who officers believe was killed up to two years ago.
Kyran Durnin was last seen at a primary school in Dundalk, some 83 kilometres north of the capital, Dublin, at the end of the school year in 2022. He was then aged just six.
Police on Tuesday upgraded its missing persons inquiry to a murder investigation, saying it now believed that Kyran was “missing, presumed dead”.
Last week, officers said they had been unable to find the boy, identify any information about his current whereabouts or evidence that he was still alive.
The investigation involves close cooperation with agencies including Irish child protection agency Tusla, which reported Kyran’s disappearance in August.
Tusla also said it had previously alerted police about his welfare.
“We can confirm that whilst Kyran was not in the care of Tusla, our services had engaged with both he and his family,” the state agency said in a statement on Tuesday.
“In August 2024, we alerted (Irish police) in relation to a significant concern about Kyran.”
The Dundalk property, which was the young boy’s family home until May 2024, is undergoing technical and forensic examinations, along with the garden and adjoining grounds, said police. The current tenants of the property are not connected with the child’s disappearance, it said.
Police also said they have identified the whereabouts of Kyran’s mother, who was also reported missing in August, in the United Kingdom. “This is a shocking and disturbing case. How can a child in 2024 go missing from his family and community for two years?” said head of the Children’s Rights Alliance group Tanya Ward.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said on Tuesday that the case is “deeply disturbing, deeply upsetting” and “utterly horrifying”. The boy was failed badly and “clearly something went extraordinarily wrong”.
