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Detectives are keeping a vigil by the bedside of a knife victim whose mother was stabbed to death.

Nicola McDonough, 23, was fighting for her life last night in the hospital where her mother, Margaret, 52, died earlier yesterday.

Both women were discovered with knife wounds at a hotel where they had booked into a double room for one night.

Detectives were last night unable to say whether or not they had been the victims of an attacker

Margaret McDonough and her daughter, both from Paisley, Renfrewshire, had been staying at the Premier Inn hotel in James Watt Way, Greenock, Renfrewshire.

The first indication of the horror came at 7am yesterday when hotel guests found the younger woman slumped unconscious in the corridor outside her room.

Both women were taken by ambulance to Greenock’s Inverclyde Royal Hospital, where doctors fought in vain to save Margaret, who died yesterday afternoon. They managed to stabilise her daughter, but her life was still in the balance last night.

Police confirmed Miss McDonough was in a critical condition and still too ill to be interviewed. Detectives said they were treating the incident as ‘unexplained’.

Detectives indicated that the women were from a respectable family. ‘They are not known to us,’ said a spokesman.

Detectives are pursuing several lines of inquiry, which include trying to establish if the women inflicted the wounds on themselves or on each other.

Family members have been informed, and a relative told police that they were in a state of shock and ‘utterly baffled’ by the horrific incident. The dead woman is understood to also be the mother of several sons

Yesterday, police and crime scene investigators spent eight hours searching the waterfront Premier Inn for clues.

The hotel was cordoned off and guests were questioned as they arrived and left.

The mother and daughter had apparently booked a single night stay at the Premier Inn

They are believed to have arrived there on Thursday in a red Suzuki Swift, which was left in the hotel car park.

It was taken away yesterday for forensic examination.

Police are also appealing for any witnesses to report sightings of the women and their vehicle.

Chief Superintendent Alan Speir, who is leading the inquiry, said: ‘This is a tragic set of circumstances


‘We are appealing for information after the two women were found with serious injuries at the Premier Inn hotel in Greenock.

‘The alarm was raised at 7am after a guest found one of the women in the hallway. Both women had significant injuries.

‘A 52-year-old woman and a 23- year-old woman were taken to Inverclyde Royal Hospital. The 52- year-old woman died this afternoon and the 23-year-old is still in a critical condition.

‘We are appealing for witnesses who saw them between 9am the previous day (Thursday) and 7am (Friday).

‘They are both from Paisley and we think they came from the town during the day and were in the Greenock area.’

Mr Speir was last night unable to say if the women had been the victims of an attack.

He said: ‘We cannot establish at this stage whether there are suspicious circumstances. We are treating it as unexplained.

‘There was no one else in their company and we are still trying to piece together what has happened.’