AN INQUEST opened in Derry yesterday into the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy by a British soldier in the city almost 40 years ago.
Daniel Hegarty, who worked as a labourer at a local paper mill, was shot twice in the head by a soldier from the Royal Scots Regiment at Creggan Heights near his Swilly Gardens home on the morning of Operation Motorman on July 31st, 1972.
The operation was then the biggest British military operation since the Suez crisis and was designed to regain control of the no-go areas in the North from the Provisional IRA.
The original inquest into Daniel’s death was held in Derry in October 1973.
The jury returned an open verdict. However, following a reinvestigation by the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team into the original police investigation, a fresh inquest was ordered by the Attorney General.
The new inquest, before the North’s senior coroner John L Leckey, opened before a jury yesterday in the same Bishop Street courthouse room as the original 1973 inquest.
Present yesterday were Daniel’s three sisters Margaret Brady, the applicant for the second inquest, Catherine Devenney and Philomena Conaghan.
Also present was Daniel’s cousin Christopher Hegarty who received a glancing bullet wound to the head in the same incident.
Among those legally represented are the ministry of defence, the coroner, the applicant and the PSNI.
The jurors were told the soldier who fired the fatal shots had been granted anonymity and would be known as soldier B.
The coroner told the jurors that the original postmortem findings of Daniel’s cause of death remained the same.
They were that the teenager was hit in the head by two bullets fired by soldier B.
One bullet entered the left temple before exiting at the back of the head.
The second bullet caused a deep graze to the forehead.
Among those scheduled to give evidence to the inquest, which is expected to last until next week, is Maj Gen Patrick MacLellan, who was commander of the 8th Infantry Brigade in Derry at the time of Operation Motorman and also during Bloody Sunday seven months earlier.