A brawl in the heart of Dublin’s tourism district led to a nightclub promoter being chased and stabbed to death.
It happened at about 3am on Monday after a gig ended in the Grafton Street area of the city centre that is popular with tourists.
Qayyum Balogun, 21, was chased and stabbed on nearby Clarendon Street after a clash between rival groups, police said. He was taken to St James’s hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Sections of the shopping district remained closed on Monday as forensic teams examined the area.
Balogun was reportedly from Nigeria and promoted music gigs in the city centre. Police believe the dispute started in a venue and spilled on to the street. The Irish Independent reported that a female bystander who was not connected to rival groups sustained stab wounds that were not life threatening.
Irish police are reviewing CCTV footage and awaiting the results of a postmortem examination. They have appealed for witnesses. The justice minister, Jim O’Callaghan, offered condolences to Balogun’s family.
Father John Grennan, the prior of St Teresa’s Carmelite church on Clarendon Street, voiced his shock at the death. “I want to offer our compassion and prayers for what happened here,” he told RTÉ.
Rory Hogan, a Fianna Fáil councillor, said the violence was deeply disturbing. “Incidents like these have profound impacts not only on the victim’s family but also on the wider communities.”
However, Hogan added that crime rates in Ireland’s capital had fallen and the city was safer than it used to be. “We need to be sure to separate the emotional reaction to an incident like this to the overall statistics,” he said. National murder rates fell by a quarter last year.
Police are also investigating a separate incident in which a man in his 30s entered the River Liffey after being assaulted on Saturday night in the Islandbridge area of Dublin. He was pronounced dead on Sunday.
Business owners in the Temple Bar area say lawlessness and anti-social behaviour increased during the Covid lockdowns but that increased policing in recent years had improved security.