A lawyer for British soldiers said yesterday that a case may be put strongly later that one of the Bloody Sunday wounded was a gunman who had shot at a soldier that day.
The number of civilian witnesses who have given oral evidence to the present tribunal of inquiry passed 300 yesterday, out of a probable total of some 500, with up to 400 army and police witnesses also due to testify next year.
A nurse described treating a series of injured people in a house in the Bogside after the shootings on January 30th, 1972.
Mrs Attracta Bradley, then a 22-year-old student nurse at Altnagelvin Hospital, was on duty as a Knights of Malta firstaid volunteer during the Civil Rights march in Derry that day.
She specifically recalled treating only one person for a gunshot wound. This was a young man known as "Red Mickey", who had a bullet wound high up his leg. The man, whose proper name was Michael Doherty, was known around the town by his nickname as he had red hair.
She said that like most of the injured people on that occasion, he did not want to go to Altnagelvin Hospital. She did not know how he had received the injury.
Mr Peter Clarke QC, for a number of British soldiers who were in Derry on Bloody Sunday, said "the suggestion that may be made in very strong terms is that Mickey Doherty was a gunman who shot a soldier". Mr Clarke indicated this suggestion would be in relation to a shot fired towards Barrack Street (outside the Bogside) that went through a flak jacket "straight across a soldier's chest". The witness said she had never heard that.
Mrs Bradley said that, working as a hospital nurse, she had treated many army personnel and police as well as civilians. Counsel put it to her that there had been occasions, "particularly as a Knight of Malta rather than as a nurse, where you almost have to turn a blind eye as to how the person was injured - it is none of your business really?"
The witness agreed it was none of her business. "I treat everybody, whatever creed or whatever they do," she said.
Another witness, Mr Sam Gillespie, described the circumstances in which he took photographs of Mr Michael Bridge during the moments he was shot and wounded by a soldier.
He said that while fleeing the gunfire he entered the Rossville Flats car-park and saw a group of people around the body of a youth he now knew to have been 17-year-old Jackie Duddy.
One person immediately attracted his attention because he was angry and shouting hysterically in reaction to the person lying on the ground.
This man was striding towards the soldiers with his arms outstretched behind his back as he shouted: "Shoot me, you bastards, shoot me, I am not armed either . . . "
Mr Gillespie said he himself paused at this point because he wanted to see what was going to happen. He kept Mr Bridge in the viewfinder of his camera and he pressed the button just seconds after he heard a shot and saw Mr Bridge grab his leg and spin around.
The witness, who took a number of other photographs on the day, said that shortly after Bloody Sunday a person who he had reason to believe was a member of the Provisional IRA, had asked him for the photographs, which he had refused to give.
Mr Gillespie initially declined to disclose this person's name, but after further questions from counsel to the tribunal, Mr Christopher Clarke, he agreed to write a name on a piece of paper and hand it in to the tribunal.
The inquiry continues today.