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A 23-year-old man, who became ill at a homeless shelter in the central region last Monday, died in hospital.
The man, whose girlfriend also died at the shelter last Monday, is from the Portlaoise area.
He had resided in an emergency shelter in Tullamore.
An investigation by Garda into the incident is underway.
The man and woman had been residing at the old Clonamore House Hotel in Tullamore.
The hotel closed several years ago, but ten rooms in the building have been outsourced to Laois, Offaly and Westmeath County Councils that provide homeless shelter accommodation in all three counties.
However, the length of time some residents have been staying there while waiting for alternative accommodation has been criticized.
Today’s death follows the death of three other people in the Tullamore area over the past ten days, after which Gardaí in the central region issued a warning about the origin of substances or drugs that may have been purchased on the Internet. , and that are currently circulating in the central region.
Earlier this week, Chief Superintendent John Scanlon said Gardaí is investigating the circumstances surrounding all the deaths, but that he wanted to issue strong advice to drug users.
“Anyone should be very careful when taking substances that are unknown to their origins,” he said. “Anyone who has taken substances that they are not sure of should make immediate contact with a health professional.”
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said it was “very likely that a drug cocktail” was involved in the deaths of those three people.
He said Gardaí was seeing “the difficulty for street gang traffic” and that people were turning to counterfeiting prescription drugs and selling them.
He said the circumstances that took the lives of these people were tragic, but there was always a danger when people engage in drug abuse and in the circumstances under which they can have a drug cocktail there can be a fatal outcome.
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