THE RUC is treating as suspicious the death of Andrew Spence (17) whose body was discovered in soil from a landfill site in Belfast on Monday. He had been missing for six years.
Mr Spence, a student at Castlereagh Technical College, disappeared after a night out with friends in the city centre on December 23rd, 1989. They were involved in a fracas on the busy Golden Mile.
He was last seen alive there on Christmas Eve. Witnesses said he had a head wound and was bleeding. Over the years, his family had hoped he was alive.
His mother, Grace, said he could easily turn up safe and well. She made frequent media appeals for information on his whereabouts. She was devastated by the discovery of her son's remains which were positively identified by police on Wednesday.
Fighting back tears on the doorstep of her home in Enid Parade yesterday, Mrs Spence said. "We are just so terribly upset." She has described the past six years as "pure hell".
Despite extensive police searches at the time of his disappearance, involving divers and helicopters, there were no leads.
But workmen tipping material into a landfill site on the Old Belfast Road in Ballynahinch, Co Down, on Monday discovered a skull and leg bones among the soil.
The waste had come from a building area on Belfast's Laganside, less than a mile from where Mr Spence had last been seen alive. Scores of RUC officers moved in to search for more remains.
Items of clothing found matched those which the teenager had been wearing on the night he disappeared. He was positively identified when teeth found on the site matched his dental records.
Forensic scientists are continuing to examine the remains. An RUC spokesman said the death was being treated as suspicious but not yet as murder. That would be not be possible until the pathologist's report showed how Mr Spence died, he added.
The police are not believed to be following any definite lines of inquiry. However, everyone who previously gave information about Mr Spence's disappearance will be interviewed again.
The RUC is still anxious to establish his final movements. The Free Presbyterian minister, the Rev David McIlveen, who has been comforting Mrs Spence, her husband Andrew and their other children, Jennifer (23) David (18) and Sharon (15), said the family was facing their grief bravely.
"They have shown great fortitude and dignity throughout this dreadful ordeal," he said. I have just tried to tell them that Andrew will still live on in a practical sense in their memories and hearts.
"In one way, it's a relief that the police have found him. For so many years the family wondered whether every phone call, every knock at the door would be Andrew."