Neely Rooney's son, Patrick, was nine years old when he was shot dead in 1969 in his home in Divis Flats at the bottom of the Falls Road in west Belfast. Patrick was hit by a bullet fired by a British soldier outside on the street.
Mr Rooney told the story of his son's death for the first time yesterday at a conference for relatives of people killed by the security forces over the past 30 years.
"We had only moved into Divis Flats from an old house. Everybody was satisfied. We were happy. I distinctly remember there was a bit of rioting going on that day on August 14th. I got home from work. I thought there was just another demonstration. I heard the bullets and saw a couple of guys getting shot in the legs.
"That went on all day until that night and there were loyalist mobs coming down Percy Street and Conway Street. The next thing I remember was armoured cars going up and down the road firing indiscriminately into the flats. "I picked Patrick up. At the time people got the story wrong from the press that my son was shot in bed. He wasn't. I still blame myself to this day, because I lifted my kids from one room to another and Patrick was standing against the wall.
"I was shot myself in the forehead, just a graze, but the blood flew out of my head, and my wife Alice, she thought Patrick had fainted at the idea of me being shot. Little did we realise that Patrick had been shot himself - in the back of the head.
"It was pandemonium. Everybody scattered. I tried to get an ambulance. We eventually got somebody to get an ambulance - an Australian fella. He got out a white hanky and waved it. We had to go through the mob, shooting and firing, and through the B Specials to get an ambulance.
"We got the ambulance but nobody from the authorities ever came to tell me where my son had been taken to. I first tried the City Hospital and then the Royal. They told me `we had a kid that fits the description, but it may not be your son'. And then I thought to myself if it's not him, it's some other kid anyway. We eventually got to see Patrick, and I sat in that hospital all night.
"I was in that much of a daze, I didn't know where I was. In actual fact it was a loyalist taxi driver who took me home and the fella was actually crying and he said he was ashamed to be a loyalist.
"We eventually got Patrick home, but we couldn't bury him from Divis Flats because the whole of the Falls Road was barricaded. So my wife had to be escorted by the British army up to Andersonstown to where her sister lived, to have Patrick buried. When I think of all the kids who have died. We saw another example last week, with the Quinn children. "At the inquest the authorities admitted liability. They said it was a riotous situation. They can't say to me he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in his home when he was shot dead."
Yesterday's conference was organised by the Relatives For Justice group as part of the West Belfast Festival to give the relatives of some 400 people killed by the security forces an opportunity to tell their stories.
A spokeswoman for the group said the relatives wanted the truth of these killings told. She said they had been ignored in a report on victims compiled earlier this year by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield.