The RUC inspector on duty in Omagh in the minutes leading up to the 1998 bomb atrocity has retired on medical grounds as a direct result of events that day, the inquests hearing heard yesterday.
Insp Joseph Johnston is due to give evidence next Monday. He would say that when the bomb warning came in he believed his wife and family could be in the town centre, his lawyer, Mr Stephen Ritchie, said.
Mr Johnston is scheduled to give evidence on Monday along with three other officers who were on duty that day - a sergeant and the two constables staffing the communications room in the police station. The coroner, Mr John Leckey, will deliver a ruling on Monday to determine the scope of police evidence.
The inquests hearing was also told yesterday that if the perpetrators were caught the charges against them should include causing the deaths of two unborn twin girls whose mother was killed by the car bomb blast.
Responding to a legal application for the unborn twins of Ms Avril Ann Monaghan to be made party to the inquest, Mr Leckey said: "As far as I am concerned 31 persons died, but for legal reasons I can only claim jurisdiction over 29."
Mr Leckey indicated his findings would reflect this view, and he also undertook that his report to the North's Director of Public Prosecutions would note the killing of the two unborn children and suggest charges be considered under 1945 legislation which defines the offence of "destruction of children".
Earlier, in legal submissions on behalf of the next of kin of Ms Monaghan, Mr Barry Fox, solicitor, said medical evidence had suggested the twins could have had life independently of the mother for a brief span of time after she died. Mr Leckey said he could agree the twins did survive briefly, but not that their survival was independent of the mother. He said the legal position seemed to be that in order to show there was an independent existence, it must be shown there was complete expulsion from the mother and some signs of independent existence, for example breathing.
All the indications were that the unborn Monaghan twins were going to be born healthy, Mr Leckey accepted. He noted that in such cases, were the children born alive he would have jurisdiction and the parents would be able to get both a birth certificate and a death certificate.
Ms Gemma Loughran, counsel to the coroner, said it would be impossible not to be sympathetic to the view of the families that the two unborn twins were victims of the atrocity. She said the coroner, in his opening statement, had commented: "Who could deny that the true number of fatalities was in fact 31?"
But his role as coroner was not to decide the moral status of these unborn children.
Ms Loughran pointed out that if a child died in the womb even one day before full gestation the coroner would have no jurisdiction. These children had died at 34 weeks' gestation and it would be very difficult to assert that they were even born.
The hearing will resume on Monday.