RUC victim of blast bomb is buried

A man who had a "big wave and a broad smile", was how his neighbour, the Rev Philip McConnell described Frankie O'Reilly, the RUC constable who died this week following a loyalist blast bomb attack in Portadown last month.

Mr McConnell met Constable O'Reilly frequently as the officer took his sons Steven (10) and Gary (3) to their schools in Waringstown, Co Down. Constable O'Reilly also had a baby daughter, Sarah, who was only 10 weeks old when he took the full force of the explosion during a loyalist protest over Drumcree. The 30-year-old father, husband, son, brother, friend, colleague and friend was buried yesterday.

"You always got a friendly greeting from Frankie," Mr McConnell recalled at his Manse in Waringstown, only yards from the O'Reilly home. "Just weeks ago we'd been talking about arranging Sarah's baptism; just this week we were arranging Frankie's funeral."

Hundreds of people turned up for the private funeral. Most of them were RUC colleagues in civilian uniform of dark suits. Some wept openly as the funeral cortege processed from the O'Reilly home. Constable O'Reilly was one of the small number of catholics who joined the RUC, although in later years he had generally lapsed from the church. His eldest son Steven attended Sunday school in the Presbyterian church and was a member of the Boys Brigade. Occasionally Constable O'Reilly would join his wife, Janice, for service in the Presbyterian church.

As well as sympathising with his immediate family, Mr McConnell offered his condolences to the officer's parents Frankie and Eilish, and his brother Damien.

His coffin, draped in the Union Jack with his cap and medals on top, was carried by uniformed colleagues. Some of those shouldering his weight shook with tears. His wife, her arm around Steven, followed behind in a funeral car. Her face betrayed anguish, despair and some anger.

Yet two weeks ago it seemed that Constable O'Reilly might survive when he regained consciousness in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.

"Frankie was able to communicate by written note and gesture. He asked how his team, Glentoran, had fared in the Irish League, and told his family that the first thing he wanted when he got out of hospital was a peppered steak," Mr McConnell said.

Constable O'Reilly also wrote little notes telling his wife, his two sons and his baby that he loved them. But last weekend complications set in and he died on Tuesday as a result of his injuries. People who would be perceived as being on opposite ends of the Drumcree protest attended yesterday's funeral.

Mr Denis Watson, the independent unionist Assembly member who has supported the protest, attended the service at the family home. The Orange Order chaplain, the Rev William Bingham also attended, as did Ms Brid Rodgers of the SDLP. They joined such high-profile mourners as the RUC chief constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, UUP Assembly member Mr Dermot Nesbitt, and the DUP mayor of Craigavon, Mr Mervyn Carrick.

Whatever some people may continue to think, what happened to Constable O'Reilly was not for God and Ulster, Mr McConnell told the mourners. "There can be no justification whatsoever for this senseless waste of a young life, and those who orchestrate, and indeed perpetrate such heinous deeds must know that no cause has been advanced. Such action is not `For God and Ulster', for it justifies neither."