The couple raised their two boys Simon and Stephen and two girls Eimear and Catraoine in Navan, County Meath, Ireland.

[5] Cumbers was 36 years old at the time of his murder and he was buried at Redwood Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland.

[8] Around the age of 20, he started as a rookie and advanced to chief reporter for Capitol Radio (now called FM104) in Dublin, Ireland.

In the late 1990s, he retrained and became a cameraman as well, establishing Locum Productions with his wife and BBC journalist Louise Bevan, to supply camera crews to broadcasters.

[6][11] The team was in place reporting between 10 and 30 minutes and a man, later identified as Adel al-Dhubaiti, greeted the journalists and then opened fire on them.

[18] A week before Gardner and Cumbers reported from Saudi Arabia, twenty-two foreigners were taken hostage and killed by a faction of Al-Qaeda during a shooting rampage, known as the Khobar massacre, in an eastern oil hub.

"[11] A spokesperson for the Committee to Protect Journalists said, "We deplore this deadly attack on our colleagues and call on Saudi authorities to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice in a timely manner.

"[22] Stewart Purvis, a former chief executive of ITN, said, "These are tragic circumstances and they are very dangerous for any media presence in Saudi Arabia.