Young soldier was smiling as sniper's bullet struck

"EVERY time I close my eyes," said Ms Lorraine McElroy yesterday, "I see the young soldier and his smiling face." She felt this might give his parents some comfort - that he was smiling before he died.

Ms McElroy had just spoken on the phone to Ms Rita Restorick, mother of Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick (23), from Peterborough. The soldier was shot in the back by a sniper's bullet as he handed back Ms McElroy's driving licence at a British army checkpoint in Bessbrook village, Co Armagh.

"All I can think of is that woman and her sweet boy. It was the saddest thing I ever saw," she said of the shooting.

Ms McElroy and her husband, Tony, had driven into town to buy ice cream for their two sons. Afterwards, they were coming back to the checkpoint. "We recognised Stephen immediately. We go through the checkpoint several times every day. You get to know the soldiers.

"I handed in the licence and he was just looking at me and he was smiling and just like that he was hit" - Ms McElroy snaps her fingers. "It was like a crack. The next thing I knew, blood was pouring from my head and I thought I had been shot.

"The soldier had dropped to the ground by the car. I really felt that I was dying. I actually said to Tony to make sure my mummy looks after my children."

Ms McElroy pauses and then says: "For about four or five minutes after that, there was an eerie silence. All you could hear were the soldiers' shouts for everybody to stay down and keep down. They were obviously afraid of further fire.

"In all that time, I could hear the soldier on the ground moaning and I wanted to get out and help him. I thought that he needed help and then panic broke out. The soldiers were running around and they were trying to cover him up and help him."

Ms McElroy's brother was in the car behind hers. He got a towel and wiped her head and assured her that she had not been badly hurt. "Then the ambulance came and we went in the ambulance with the soldier. That couple of minutes in the ambulance was just terrible. The poor fellow was dying. It's just so very, very sad."

Afterwards, Ms McElroy was discharged from hospital. She was told the bullet that killed the soldier then probably ricocheted off his rifle and sliced across her forehead. "So had I been turned a little bit more towards him, I wouldn't be here."

When the McElroys got home, they saw a camera crew at their front door. They were not going to talk to it. "But then I thought I don't want people in England and everywhere else thinking that we agreed with what had been done because we certainly do not.

"I thought I actually had a duty to tell people. And you see on the news and you read in the papers `soldier has died'. But it as I keep saying today, he wasn't just a soldier, he was a man, he was somebody's son - a lovely, lovely young man. And somebody just took his life and they could have taken mine in the process."

The dead soldier's commanding officer, Lieut Gen Matthew Sykes, described him as a "popular, easy-going young man with many friends". He was serving as an infantry soldier with the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery and had been in the army for 4 1/2 years.