The murder of a young prostitute working in the Grand Canal area was only a matter of time, one local garda said yesterday.
According to gardai, the young women like Sinead Kelly are prepared to take risks that the old prostitutes working in the area would not consider. The older women also keep flats to which they take their clients and often have clients with whom they have regular contact. The younger women apparently do not discriminate.
They generally have two types of clients for whom gardai use the generic terms "drivers" - men in cars - and "walkers" - men who approach the prostitutes on foot and usually go to the canal bank for perfunctory sex.
When you're addicted to drugs everything else comes second. One in five prostitutes interviewed in said they had been beaten up and 11 per cent said they had been raped. A garda working in the area says they have been concerned that one of the younger prostitutes would be murdered.
It is believed Ms Kelly 21 met a man in the Fitzwilliam Square-Grand Canal area and walked with him to the stretch of embankment on the north side of the Canal at Herbert Place to perform a sexual act behind the line of sycamore and lime trees that shade the canal from the street.
