A defenceless toddler had been thrown into an old quarry with a brick tied around his neck
The viaduct that crosses the Boyne river in Drogheda carries thousands of commuters and shoppers between Dundalk and Belfast every week.
Whichever direction they were going in, if they took the train any time between daylight and noon yesterday morning they would have passed the quarry in which young Jack Brennan was left for dead.
The sun was shining, but it was still bitingly cold when his body was taken from the now-disused and flooded quarry yesterday. The water is only five feet deep, but it was more than enough in which to drown a toddler.
There was an awful stillness in Drogheda as people tried to digest the fact that an 18-month-old toddler had been thrown into an old quarry with a brick tied round his neck.
It was a fact that shocked a town which has seen its share of violence in recent years.
Three years ago the bodies of a drugs-dealer, Patrick Farrell, and his girlfriend, Lorraine Farrell, were found in a bedroom in her family house.
Gardai believe she murdered him, then turned the gun on herself.
In 1995 the former INLA leader, Dominic McGlinchey, was shot dead as he made a telephone call from a public phone box.
The new year in Drogheda started with the murder of a local taxi man, Mr Edward Reay.
The sorrow and sadness those deaths brought to the families concerned and the town in general was different. Yesterday the fact that a child could be killed in cold blood simply stunned the community.
"This is something you would read about in a far-flung country that happened in bygone years. The town of Drogheda is shocked and saddened," a local councillor, Mr Frank Godfrey, said.
It appears the infant met his death somewhere between his home on the Marsh road and the quarry.
It is approximately 300 yards from the house on the road that leads to Mornington and east Meath.
It is an old part of town. The terraced home Jack Brennan shared with his mother and grandmother is identical to thousands that were built when the railways arrived in the 18th century.
It is a busy road now, with traffic heading to nearby businesses and industry.
The Gardai appeal for witnesses who might have seen the infant being pushed away from his safe home in his buggy is certain to get a positive response.
Local people spoke of the horror of such a thing happening in their town.
It is a horror which neither they - nor any parent - will forget.