Members of the Garda Síochána have today announced that they are focusing their search efforts for missing schoolchild Kyran Durnin on an area in the Co Louth town of Drogheda. The last confirmed sighting of Kyran was in May 2022, and concern has grown during that time that he may have come to some form of physical harm.
Though technical and forensic examination is currently underway at an undisclosed address in Drogheda, Gardaí have said that the purpose of the search is to “discover any evidence which might provide us with information as to Kyran’s current whereabouts or what has happened to Kyran.”
A statement from the police said that they were aware of ‘extensive ongoing commentary’ surrounding the case “including speculation, rumours, and theories on what may have happened to Kyran, most of which is inaccurate and misinformed”.
Despite the fact that Kyran has been missing for almost three years, a missing persons report was not filed until August 2024 when Gardaí were led to believe that he had last been seen in Drogheda some two days prior. Information then came to light which led detectives to suspect that the boy had been missing for a substantially longer period of time.
In October 2024, the case was upgraded from missing persons to murder. Two adults, a man and a woman, have been arrested in relation to the new classification but ultimately released without charge. The man in that instance, named locally as Anthony Maguire, 36, was found dead at his home in Drogheda in December 2024.
In total, Gardaí have now carried out extensive searches on three addresses in relation to Kyran’s disappearance – one in Dundalk and two in Drogheda – and detectives are appealing for any information from the public on the child’s whereabouts. Kyran would be eight-years-old as of the current date.