THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 340: A former member of the British army's Parachute Regiment claimed yesterday that he saw the body of a civilian gunman "shudder" when it was struck by "a fair few" bullets on Bloody Sunday.
The now retired paratrooper said he witnessed the incident from inside a military Ferret car that he had driven into the Bogside area of Derry.
The former soldier told the Saville inquiry into the killings in 1972 that the gunman, who was armed with a rifle, fired a number of shots in his direction from behind a rubble barricade in the Bogside's Rossville Street.
"We were about 50 yards away from the barricade," he told the inquiry yesterday. "I saw a guy in a dark jacket walking diagonally from our right-hand side in the area of the barricade kneeling down and with a rifle starting firing in our general direction.
"There could have been a couple of shots, but it might have been more. You could see the rifle quite clearly, he made no attempt to hide it."
The witness, known as Inquiry 993, said the gunman was "put down" because of the amount of bullets fired at him. "As I remember, I saw a fair few rounds hit that person and for him to fall over. I could see him shudder and fall over."
The witness was told by counsel, Ms Kathy McGahey, that six of the 13 Bloody Sunday victims were shot dead in the immediate vicinity of the barricade behind which he had seen the gunman. Inquiry 993 said he could not identify the gunman as one of those six victims, but he added that he was "absolutely certain" of what he had witnessed.
Barrister Mr Arthur Harvey, who represents most of the families of the victims, queried the witness's evidence. "Because, again, in relation to this particular aspect, there is not one soldier, not one, who fired a shot on this day who claims to have shot a rifleman in the location that you have pointed out. Were you aware of that?" Mr Harvey asked.
The witness replied: "No."