The first-floor apartment where a 17-year-old boy was shot and fatally wounded did not stand out at first glance. A Garda tape cordoned off a section of the three-storey yellow-brick apartments, but little else seemed amiss.
However, on a first-floor apartment landing a bundle of what looked like sheets lay in the corner of a balcony and the glass door was open, with both the security light outside and the living room light still on.
At 10am all was quiet in the apartment complex enclosing a well-manicured lawn. Two uniformed gardaí stood on duty. Many of the apartments remain unoccupied in the Dunboyne Castle estate, a plush development of houses and apartments, beside the renovated castle of the same name, which has been turned into a hotel.
At 10.40am a Garda forensics van arrived and the experts got to work, checking the ground, cars and shrubbery around the block, before bagging a number of items including what looked like a bullet shell, and covering other areas with traffic cones.
Neighbours, shocked at the news of the Nigerian teenager's death during the night, had been unaware of any unusual activity.
Anthony Ryan, who lives in a ground floor apartment, said he heard some "banging of doors and yelling, but I didn't take any notice of it. I didn't hear any shots, but then I've never heard a shot fired." His car was in the area cordoned off by gardaí so he was unable to remove it until the forensics unit had finished. Mr Ryan did not know the teenager who had been shot but believed he lived in the apartment for about two months. "I think there were five or six people and they had two apartments, one above the other."
Another neighbour, Gemma Maguire, was also waiting to get access to her car. She only arrived home about 1.15am or 1.20am but did not see anything unusual. "The first I knew of it was when I got a text message this morning from a friend who heard about the shooting, checking to see I was okay." Ms Maguire only moved into her new apartment in an end block at The Court on Sunday. From Ashbourne, she bought in Dunboyne because she liked the area. "It was nice and quiet," she says with a resigned smile.
Carol and Barry Wynne have lived on the estate almost two years. When she saw a camera crew approaching them, Ms Wynne thought it was a joke. "You think of these things happening in Blanchardstown, but just outside the door near the house is just scary."