€10,000 offer for news of student

THE family of missing student Richard Wellwood has offered a €10,000 reward for information on his whereabouts.

Images of the 21-year-old have been posted all over Dublin city centre, while a chain email from the Wellwood family pleading for information is also being circulated.

The UCD student had been out with friends when he vanished in the early hours of Saturday morning. They had been in Club M at Blooms Hotel in Temple Bar.

Known as Richie, he was last captured on CCTV footage on Westmoreland Street at 3.37am.

The gardaí and his concerned family yesterday stepped up their appeals to trace the third-year horticulture student, originally from Abbeyleix in Co Laois.

Sharing his brother’s last known movements, Paul Wellwood said: “He went out with friends to the union bar in UCD.

Then four of them went into town to Club M, Blooms Hotel. Following that they were all captured on CCTV leaving together and they ended up dispersing in their own general direction, each one presuming the other was getting a taxi home. They were all fine.

“He has been followed on CCTV going down Fleet Street and the last known CCTV image of him was outside Abrakebabra on Westmoreland St. He wasn’t actually in the restaurant, but just outside it between 3.30am and 4am on Saturday morning.”

The missing man was described as 6’3” with brown hair and brown eyes. When last seen he was wearing blue jeans, white Nike runners and a grey hooded top with the hood up.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Pearse Street on 01 6669000.