A woman driving a rental car was horrified to find a dead body in the boot of the vehicle after she pulled over to investigate a foul smell.
The shocking discovery was made on Monday in the small village of Mullinavat in county Kilkenny, near the border with Waterford in the Republic of Ireland.
It is understood the man who was found deceased was the same person who had rented the car immediately before the young woman who found the body, the Irish Mirror reports.
The customer who went through the distressing ordeal of stumbling across the corpse in the car was a local woman from the area, aged in her 20s.
The dead man, who was 40 years old and from Waterford, had been the subject of a Garda appeal after he was reported missing from the city, with the public being asked for help in locating his whereabouts.
His disappearance was logged almost two weeks before he was tragically found dead in the GoCar rental.
A source close to the family of the woman who made the sad discovery said: “She picked up the car at one of the GoCar depot spots and had just a short drive out to where she was heading, the village of Mullinavat, I’d say around five miles.
“While she was driving she noticed a funny smell, she didn’t know what it was, thought it smelled like gas and thought it might be coming from the car engine when she started the car.
“But it didn’t go away and so she stopped the car when she got to Millivant and that's where she made the shocking discovery, there was the body of a dead man in the boot. She was stunned, the gardai were called then and they took it from there."
The Irish Mirror asked Europcar, the parent company of GoCar, if cars were cleaned or valeted between rent-outs, or if the cars were checked to make sure there was nothing left behind by a previous renter.
In a statement in reply, the company said: “GoCar is assisting An Garda Síochána with its investigation into the tragic incident that occurred earlier this week in Kilkenny.
“We express our deepest condolences to the loved ones of the deceased at this time.”
GoCar is a self-service car rental company. The service allows you to rent cars for as little as an hour, using a booking system to reserve the vehicle and in-car technology to unlock the car and drive.
There are over 800 GoCar cars and vans available to rent across Ireland in most major towns and cities. The gardai announced on Tuesday that a missing person appeal for the dead man had been stood down.
The original missing persons appeal had been issued on July 8. If anybody is affected by the issues raised in this report, they can contact Samaritans at 116123 and speak to a Samaritan for support.
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