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Man charged with Latvian’s murder in Ireland

February 09, 2008

A Lithuanian man has been charged with the murder of a 35-year-old Latvian fisherman whose body was discovered in a harbor north of Dublin in October 2006, Irish police have announced.

Sergejs Lavrinovics, 35, was charged Feb. 8 in Cloverhill District Court with the murder of Igors Bandarenko. Lavrinovics had been in custody since December, charged with assaulting Bandarenko.

Bandarenko’s body was found with a rope tied around the ankles and then to an anchor, according to Irish media reports. He was killed sometime between Sept. 18 and Oct. 4, 2006—and just seven months after arriving in Ireland.

Bandarenko is at least the third Latvian national murdered in Ireland in the past two years.

Renārs Tuleiko was murdered in April in Thurles in south central Ireland. Two people have been charged in his death. Irish authorities in December charged Kevin Keohan, 34, of Thurles with murder. Victoria Moverley, 32, was charged in November with assaulting Tuleiko, according to media reports. Tuleiko left a wife and two children in Latvia.

Meanwhile, no has been charged in the November 2006 apparent murder-for-hire of Baiba Saulīte, a mother of two. Saulīte was gunned down at the entrance to her home in Swords, a suburb of Dublin. Several individuals, including her estranged husband Hassan Hassan, have been questioned in the case. Irish police say the investigation continues.

— Andris Straumanis