The family of a teenager who was shot dead by a British soldier in the Creggan area of Derry 31 years ago said yesterday that new information about the killing, given to them by the PSNI, merited a judicial review.
Daniel Hegarty (16) was hit twice in the head when a soldier in the Royal Scots Regiment fired a burst of shots at him from a general-purpose machine gun mounted on a tripod. He was one of two people killed in the Creggan area by British soldiers on the day of Operation Motorman on July 31st, 1972.
At the time of his death, eyewitnesses, among them a soldier and two of his cousins, one of whom was shot alongside the teenager, said that Daniel Hegarty was shot from a range of less than 10 feet. However, when a police map was presented to the coroner at the inquest into the teenager's death 15 months later, it located the youth about 70 feet from where he'd been shot.
"Daniel was shot dead at point-blank range by a soldier who fired an extremely powerful gun at him," said the youth's sister, Mrs Margaret Brady.
"To hide the fact that they killed him from such close range, they produced a false map to the inquest. That has been confirmed to us by this letter today from the police. The inquest ruled on Daniel's death based on the evidence before them. Part of that evidence was a false map; therefore in our opinion a judicial review is merited.
"The soldier who killed him told the inquest that Daniel was armed. We know he wasn't and the soldier knows he wasn't because he would have been able to see from less than 10 feet that Daniel wasn't armed. My father Alex died four years ago and on his death bed he asked the family to fight to clear Daniel's name and that's what we're determined to do," said Mrs Brady.
The teenager's cousin, Christopher Hegarty, who was also shot in the same incident, said the soldier who shot Daniel should be charged with murder.
"He shot at us from point-blank range. Daniel was killed but I survived. A bullet grazed the right side of my head and fell to the ground. I turned around and saw Daniel. I lifted him up but when I saw the head wound I knew he was dead," said Mr Hegarty.
The Hegarty family solicitor, Mr Paddy McGurk, said the family would be seeking a declaration through judicial review proceedings in the High Court in Belfast for circumstances around Daniel Hegarty's death to be re-examined.