AS REPORTS filtered through that Finglas man Mr Brendan Woolhead was under armed guard in a London hospital, neighbours on Clancy Road were emphatic that the 33 year old man was an innocent victim of Sunday's IRA bomb.
On Monday afternoon his distraught elderly parents, Marie and Joe, had left for London with his girlfriend Gillian and his brother Gerard. They had just heard Brendan was in hospital. Everyone was stunned.
As the television cameras arrived yesterday morning, Marie rang a friend at home to tell her the news.
"She was in tears. She had gone to the hospital to see Brendan, but they wouldn't let her see him," said a neighbour. "It is unreal, what is happening."
By noon the mood around the green on Clancy Road had turned to anger. Mr Brendan Woolhead was being portrayed as the most wanted man in Britain. Everyone in Finglas believed it could not be true.
"The only crime Brendan has committed is being Irish in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is this going to be another Birmingham Six?" said one local.
"Brendan was here when the Canary Wharf bomb went off. He could not have been involved," said another. "He was not involved in politics. It just couldn't be true."
The Wool head family were one of the first to move in to the housing estate on Clancy Road more than 40 years ago. "We all arrived here as brides," says one elderly woman. "All our children grew up together. Marie's family are like everyone else. They are great neighbours, great friends."
Mr Brendan Woolhead had come home from England for a couple of weeks in the hope of finding work in Dublin where his girlfriend Gillian and five year old son Alex are living.
The second youngest of six children, he was very close to his family. In recent days he helped his father, Joe, fix a car in front of the house. Although he had not found work, he appeared to be in good form.
He had been living in London for the last six years. His sister is married there. He met Gillian there. She had returned to Ireland to look after her mother who has since died. They wanted to settle here, say friends.
Mr Woolhead had worked for British Telecom until Christmas When he could not find work at home he accepted an offer of contract work with his former employer and returned to London on Saturday.
It was Gillian who realised something was wrong. She had seen a picture of a young man being taken from the wreckage. An oxygen mask covered his torn face, he was being loaded on to an ambulance to be taken to St Thomas's Hospital. She was convinced it was Brendan but the name did not match the list held by the Department of Foreign Affairs and it took hours to establish that he had been injured in the blast.
"It was the start of a nightmare for us," his sister in law Finola Green told RTE. When the family watched the evening news they saw police in flak jackets guarding his room. "It was very frightening. The family appreciate that the police in England had to do everything in their power to investigate any leads they might have. But it was very frightening for everyone involved," she said.
Just before 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon the news broke that the armed guards had been removed from Mr Woolhead's bedside in St Thomas's hospital.
He remains seriously injured in hospital. He has a fractured skull, a fractured pelvis and has already undergone an operation on his leg. But locals say it could have been worse.