Kyran Durnin: Missing boy’s suspected murder unlike anything in 40 years, says Ireland’s police chief

Ireland’s police chief has said the suspected murder of an eight-year-old boy is an “extraordinary” case unlike any he’s seen in his 40-year career.

A murder investigation began last week after Kyran Durnin and his mother were reported missing on 30 August.

His mother has been found, but the whereabouts of Kyran is unknown and police presume he is dead. They suspect he may have died in 2022, aged six.

Officers were searching a former family property and land in Dundalk, County Louth, for a third day on Thursday, with a digger seen in wasteland behind the terraced house.

Police said the family lived there for several years until May 2024.

Garda commissioner Drew Harris told reporters: “It is an extraordinary incident. I’ve over 40 years now in the police, and I have not seen really the like.

“I cannot think of a similar set of circumstances, and in that way there’s a particular element to this which is difficult to comprehend. But we have our work to do.”

“What we have worked at is to try and identify proof of life since the last actual sighting in 2022,” the commissioner added. “So I cannot comment specifically on whether Kyran reached his seventh or eighth birthday.”

He said the public had come forward with “important information” in the last week.

Ireland‘s justice minister said it was “devastating” Kyran may have died several years ago without anyone apparently noticing.

The child and family agency, Tusla, raised a “significant concern” about Kyran to police in August. It confirmed it had “engaged” with the family in the past.

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“The death of any child is devastating, particularly where children are vulnerable and where a child is engaged with state agencies or is in our state services, and they are particularly vulnerable,” said justice minister Helen McEntee.

“The objective here is to find him,” she said.

“We don’t know where he is and the gardai are working hard to do that, to understand what has happened, and if people need to be held accountable, that it happens, because no time, expense, nothing is being spared here.”

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris told parliament this week the country was “utterly horrified and utterly heartbroken” by the case.