FRANCIS WHITE may have been 6ft 3in tall and held a black belt in judo, but he was not able to fight the man who attacked him from behind and stabbed him in the neck four times.
Within minutes, Francis (28) was lying dead in the arms of one of his flatmates, a few hundred yards from their apartment on Queen's Boulevard in New York.
"This is a tragedy," said his visibly upset father, Bernard, at the family home at Balreagan, Dundalk, yesterday. It was 24 hours since he had been told by the Garda of his son's murder, and friends and neighbours were calling to offer their support and condolences.
"He was on the telephone to us the night before it happened. He was looking for our advice ... he was on the phone two or three times a week," said Mr White.
Francis was a popular and generous man who phoned his family every Sunday at 2 p.m., and was due to return home on the 23rd of this month. He was bringing his 28-year-old fiancee, Sabrina Swenson, with him.
She was an air hostess he asked out nine months ago after she dined in the Irish Cottage pub where he worked as a chef and, in recent months, a bartender.
When he rang his parents on Monday night he wanted their advice on whether he should take a job in London - Sabrina had just been transferred there.
Francis had finished his work at the Irish Cottage and had joined friends for a drink in O'Hanlon's pub, which is close to the apartment he shared with two long-time friends.
Leaving the pub, he was attacked by a man who had been thrown out earlier.
"Francis was killed instantly with three or four stabs of a knife," said his father. His friends saw the scuffle and ran out to assist Francis, but were too late.
"He was the unlucky one who came out of the pub first. He (the culprit) was going to kill someone," said Mr White, a higher executive officer with the Revenue Commissioners.
Francis decided to emigrate in 1988. He sat his Leaving Certificate at 16 and went to Cathal Brugha Street, where he qualified as a chef. He then worked in several Irish hotels and in Germany.
"He came home from Germany and then went to America with some friends he had met in Cathal Brugha Street. He loved life and travelling, he had taken a lot of holidays in America," explained his father.
The dead man's younger brother, Breen (27), has travelled to New York to arrange to fly Francis's body home for burial.
A few years ago, for their parents' 25th wedding anniversary, the whole family had gone to New York. Yesterday, Francis's 15-year-old sister, Marie, was looking through family albums for a photograph for the newspapers while her older sister, Deirdre (29), was due to arrive from Portsmouth in England with her young family.
Mrs Kathleen McNulty was Francis's boss and was in Ireland on holiday when she heard the news. She immediately went to be with his family in Dundalk.
"He was one of the best guys. If someone had too much to drink he'd get them a cab and pay for it himself" she said between tears.