A MEMBER of the Garda who was a close friend of Veronica Guerin said the journalist believed the closer she got to the criminals she wrote about, the less likely she was to be killed.
"Just like in boxing, Veronica believed the closer you got to your opponent the more difficult it was for him to hit you hard. She believed she was invincible and getting close would make it more difficult for them to do something like this. We know now, and Graham [her husband] knows, that she was wrong," said the garda, who has been a friend of Ms Guerin's for a number of years.
He said that only a handful of people who were close to Ms Guerin knew what motivated her and caused her to take such risks. "Only about six people knew what really made her tick and take those risks."
Ms Guerin, he said "believed that she was a crusader and could change the world. She wanted to change the way people thought about crime and criminals and the way the Garda Siochana is structured.
"You didn't have to agree with, Veronica to like her. People had a perception of her as a hard nosed woman and she often appeared dogmatic on television. That wasn't the side of her those of us who knew her will remember. She was a friend who was a bundle of laughs and always in good form. Of course, we had sharp discussions and she was quite capable of fighting her corner. But I will always remember her with a big grin on her face", he said.
After the first shooting in January 1995, he said, her son, Cathal, was too young to understand the danger and he found it almost a novelty. "He insisted on her going into school with him and showing his friends where his mom had been shot in the leg. He was just too young to understand the danger that his mother was in.
He said her husband, Graham, understood his wife's decision to keep on doing investigative work.
"They were a very different couple but very compatible. He gave her the space that she needed. He was happy that she was happy with what she was doing.