The busy road from Dublin to the south-east narrows and bends in the south Wicklow hills as it nears Ashford. The Cullenmore Hotel is about 21/2 miles outside the village, set against the wooded slopes of the Wicklow Mountains; on the other side of the road is a small, neat cottage where the Crean family live.
Mr Crean was working in his garden at about 5 p.m. yesterday when he heard shouts and shots. "I thought it was someone shooting crows," he said.
Four men came into his garden. His first thought was that they were gangsters and he was about to be robbed - "I was only after getting paid", he said. The men identified themselves as gardai.
They asked him who he was and searched him, then told him to go into his house and stay there. "About an hour later they told me they had got them all".
Across the road, the head chef of the Cullenmore, Mr Mark Anderson, and the head barman, Mr Richard Hobbs, were standing at the door in the lull between serving lunch and dinner. They were admiring the fine weather. Suddenly, a number of unmarked Garda cars sped up from the Wicklow direction and stopped the traffic, Mr Hobbs said.
"Four or five unmarked cars then came from the Dublin side," said Mr Anderson. He could see the gardai were armed.
"There was a collision between a car and a van with disabled kids in it. Men got out and five of them fled towards the hills. They were fired at. There must have been about 15 Garda cars in all."
As the area was sealed off, weekend traffic, swelled by the bank holiday, backed up on the N11 and was diverted along side roads. By about 6.30 p.m. a traffic jam extended three miles from the scene.
Journalists were kept away from the jumble of cars visible at the bend in the road about 200 yards from the hotel.
A dark unmarked Garda car shielded from view the body of the young man who died on a sunny bank holiday weekend afternoon.