Gardaí appealing for information about two vehicles after woman brutally assaulted in Tipperary

Kenneth Fox

A young mother who was the victim of a savage assault on a roadside in Co Tipperary on Saturday continued to fight for her life on Sunday.

As the Irish Examiner reports, the victim, named locally as Scarlett Faulkner, 20s, was found by emergency services with catastrophic head injuries on the side of the R494 at Birdhill.

The scene where Ms Faulkner was found seriously injured, a short distance from the lakeside towns of Ballina and Killaloe, located between Nenagh and Limerick, remained cordoned off by gardaí on Sunday.

Road users who were on the R494 between Birdhill and the M7 motorway between 5pm and 6pm on Saturday are asked to contact gardaí.

In particular, they are seeking information on the movements of two vehicles, a grey 162 Ford Transit van and a blue 161 Volkswagen Touran people carrier, travelling in convoy or driving dangerously in the area between 4.30pm and 5.30pm.

Gardaí said they are aware of video footage of the incident circulating online and have asked people not to share it on social media or messaging apps.

Gardaí were working on several theories as to the background of the assault, including that Ms Faulkner may have been travelling in a car that was rammed by a group in another vehicle, dragged from her car, and attacked with implements at the side of the roadway.

Ms Faulkner was initially attended to by HSE paramedics at the scene and then airlifted by a Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter to University Hospital Limerick (UHL) on Saturday evening.

Doctors continued to monitor her at UHL, where she underwent scans as her devastated family maintained a vigil.

On Sunday, paramedics transferred Ms Faulkner from UHL to Cork University Hospital's head trauma unit, where her condition remained serious.

Family members posted photographs of Ms Faulkner on social media and asked that people pray that she would recover from her injuries, which gardaí described as “critical”.