Glen Branagh was a "Tiger's Bay young gun", according to one of the floral tributes carried behind the coffin at his funeral.
Around two thousand people turned out to pay their last respects for the youth, who would have celebrated his 17th birthday today.
Glen, who the PSNI says was about to throw a blast bomb at its officers during disturbances in north Belfast on Sunday night, died when the device he was holding exploded.
Yesterday local community leaders still maintained he had been attempting to throw it to the side of the road.
Wherever the truth lay, there were no doubts about Glen's loyalties at his funeral.
He was a member of the Ulster Young Militants, a junior branch of the UDA, and his coffin was draped in a black and gold flag bearing the initials of the Ulster Defence Association and Loyalist Prisoners' Association. A beret on the coffin completed the display of paramilitary paraphernalia.
There were large flower arrangements from a number of UDA/UFF units, including the Shankill Road-based "C company", and a number of leading members of the UDA were present as well as representatives of the group's political wing, the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP).
After a short service at his home, Glen's coffin was carried in silent procession a few hundred metres to the site where he fell.
Beside railings bedecked with in flowers, messages of condolence and Ulster and Scotland flags the procession paused for a moment.
An Ulster flag with dozens of messages written on it lay flat on the ground marking the precise spot the blast bomb had exploded, near an interface with the Catholic New Lodge area.
Mourners had earlier warned television crews and photographers away. One cameraman was kicked and jostled by a steward when he was judged to be too near to the cortΦge.
Speaking after the funeral, the chairman of the UDP, Mr John White, warned of anger within the loyalist community following Glen's death.