A witness told yesterday of hearing cries and moans coming from a Saracen armoured vehicle into which he had seen British soldiers throw a body after the Bloody Sunday shootings.
Mr William McDonagh said nothing would put it out of his mind that there were people in that Saracen who were not dead.
He told the inquiry he was watching from Block 1 of the Rossville Flats and saw people fall close to the barricade in Rossville Street as the shooting went on. He then saw a Saracen move to within 10 to 15 feet of the barricade. Two soldiers took a body to it.
"The Paras were laughing as they carried the body and they threw it into the back of the Saracen, feet first," he said. Through the open window of the flat he could hear crying, and the impression he had was that it was coming from the Saracen. The cries were groans, as though people were seriously hurt.
He told Ms Cathryn McGahey, for the tribunal, he could not say for sure whether the person who was carried to the Saracen was dead or alive. But when the body was thrown in, he said, there was a lull in the shooting. "It seemed like time stopped. You would have heard a pin drop then. I know I heard groans come from the back of that Saracen. I heard cries," he said.
The inquiry adjourned briefly at this point to allow the witness to recover his composure. When it resumed, Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of soldiers, put it to the witness that he had said it was his impression that the sounds were coming from the armoured vehicle.
Mr McDonagh said if that was in his statement he had probably said it, "but I know I heard crying coming from the back of that Saracen, and moans".
Mr Glasgow told the witness the medical evidence concerning the three bodies placed in the back of that Saracen was to the effect that their deaths had been extremely rapid.
Another witness, Mrs Angela Copp, said she saw the incidents in the Rossville Flats car-park from a friend's flat in one of the blocks. As the gunfire started and people were screaming and running away, she saw a soldier kneel down and point his rifle towards a gap between the flats blocks towards which people were fleeing. She heard a bang and saw a boy, who she now knew was Jack Duddy, fall to the ground as he was running. "The one thing that really sticks out in my mind is the image of the sniper kneeling down and taking fire at the young boy. I couldn't believe it was happening," she said.
Mr Edmund Lawson QC, for a number of soldiers, put it to the witness that she had made an assumption that this soldier had fired the shot that hit Mr Duddy. "You did not see the recoil of the gun?" counsel asked. The witness insisted she had seen the soldier fire the gun and shoot the boy in the back. "I know he fired the gun. I saw him fire the gun. I saw him do it," she said.
In a ruling issued yesterday, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry Tribunal said it had decided to use the real name of a paratrooper who featured in a UTV programme on Bloody Sunday six years ago.
The soldier, David Longstaff, was named in the UTV programme A Tour of Duty in 1995, in which he acknowledged that he was a member of the Parachute Regiment and that he fired in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
The inquiry noted that a civilian witness wounded in Glenfada Park on Bloody Sunday had said a soldier at the scene referred to one of his colleagues as "Dave".
The ruling yesterday said the tribunal considered that, for effective questioning of witnesses, it was likely that the interested parties would have to be told which of the soldiers in Glenfada Park had the forename David.
In an associated ruling, the tribunal decided not to use the real name of the paratrooper known by the codename Soldier 027, even though the name was inadvertently disclosed in the course of an earlier inquiry hearing.
The tribunal said this was "a borderline case", but as only one newspaper report had linked the name to the coded number, the name of 027 was not clearly in the public domain and he was entitled to the protection accorded to the other soldiers.
Soldier 027 is expected to be a key witness at the inquiry. He has made a number of allegations about his colleagues using "dum-dum" bullets and firing at unarmed civilians.
The inquiry adjourned until June 4th.