The newspaper vendor's family and friends remember a loving, generous father who was trying to rebuild his life when he died
All those who knew Ian Tomlinson agree he was a gentle, unassuming man who always avoided confrontation.
Many of the first people to recognise his photograph after his death were office workers who had bought copies of the Evening Standard from him at Monument tube station.
The City of London had been a second home to Tomlinson, 47, for almost a decade.
Born in Derbyshire, he was brought up in the countryside before moving to Poplar in the east end of London, where he became a Millwall FC supporter.
He was a working-class man, loyal to friends and family who came to know him by his personal catchphrase "all that and everything".
Tomlinson married his wife, Julia, in 1991. "He was generally quiet, well-spoken, shy, but a good conversationalist," said Julia, 51.
"Once he got talking, I liked him instantly. At that time, he was working as a roofer. He also did washing-up in hotels. He loved his work and enjoyed having a routine."
Julia already had five children – Noah, Sarah, Francis, Richard and Paul – whom Tomlinson treated as his own.
"Ian became part of the family very quickly and straight away started acting like a dad," said Paul King, his stepson. "He really tried hard at the beginning to get all of us to like him. He saved up all his money and bought my older sister a BMX bike."
King added: "I remember, when it was Ian's pay day, he used to go Percy Ingle's bakeries or down the Wimpy in Chrisp Street market and buy us all treats. We thought we were rich on these days. He was a father figure to us boys, which we never had before."
Together, Tomlinson and Julia had four more daughters: Sam, Stephanie, Katie and Lynsey. "Ian didn't treat his biological children different to the others," Julia said. "He acted as a father to them all."
Tomlinson's dependency on alcohol did cause a problem for his family, though, and it eventually meant he had to leave the family home.
"When he was with us, it was brilliant, but we all knew that Ian had an illness," King said. "He drank too much, which made it hard for him to spend all the time with us. I never blamed him when he left and never had a go at him for not being there all the time. We understood it was the drink."
Eventually Tomlinson's disappearances began to grow.
His wife, who still wears her wedding ring, said he remained an important part of their life, even when he was sleeping rough.
"He was apologetic about the periods that he was away from the house and often tearful about what he was missing out on and said he would make up for it," she said. "He felt a lot of guilt."
He was last at his family home in November 2008, six months before his death. His second home had become the streets around Monument tube station, where he helped his friend, Barry Smith, sell the Evening Standard newspaper.
When he died, many of those who were first to recognise him were City workers who had come to know him, as he sat on a stool by the newspaper stand.
If he drank alcohol, it would be out of a coffee cup.
Smith speculated that Tomlinson would "still be alive" had the pair not run out of newspapers early on the evening of 1 April 2009, meaning they packed up early to head home.
Throughout this period living away from his family in the Isle of Dogs, Tomlinson tried repeatedly to overcome his alcoholism, which brought associated health problems. In the months before he died he had managed to secure accommodation at a hostel in nearby Smithfield.
It was this hostel he was trying to reach on the evening of his death, repeatedly coming across lines of riot police forming so-called "kettles" across the streets near the Bank of England.
Most people will remember Tomlinson in the succession of still images that showed him stumbling along the street wearing a grey Millwall T-shirt, his head slung low and his hands in his pockets.
It was the look of a humble, retiring man who, all those who knew him agree, would have shuddered at the undignified spectacle of his very public death.
"He would always walk with his hands in his pockets, with his head down," Julia said. "Even from the kitchen to the front room. This was partly because he had limited use of one of his hands because of an old injury, but I also think it is because he didn't like to impose himself in a situation. He liked to show that he was no bother."