Let Ashling Murphy rest in peace
There is something ghoulish about the rush to politicise this tragedy.
Ireland has been rocked by the horrific killing of Ashling Murphy, the 23-year-old schoolteacher who was attacked while out running on a canal path near her home, on the afternoon of 12 January. A 31-year-old man, Jozef Puska, has been charged in connection with her death.
As soon as the news broke, parallels were drawn between Ashling Murphy and Sarah Everard, the 33-year-old who was murdered in London last spring. ‘Shocked Ireland faces Sarah Everard moment’, declared The Times in a phrase that has since been echoed in newspapers and magazines published around the world.
Ireland’s Sarah Everard moment. What a phrase. But it reflects a grim reality. The ‘moment’ captures the fact that the parallels go deeper than the brutal killing of two beautiful young women, at the hands of a stranger and in mundane circumstances: walking home from seeing friends, out for a run in the daylight. Both killings triggered international outpourings of grief. Over the past fortnight, thousands of people have attended vigils, not just in Ireland but across Britain, too. And both women’s deaths have been used to fuel a panic about women’s safety.