THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY: A gunman fired a shot at a soldier as civilians lay dead and dying at a rubble barricade on Bloody Sunday, a witness said yesterday.
Ms Margot Harkin, who was a 20-year-old art student at the time, watched the shootings from the fifth floor of Rossville Flats.
She told the Saville inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday that after a number of people had been shot at the Rossville Street barricade she saw two young men run into the area and take up a position at a gable wall in Glenfada Park facing into Rossville Street.
One of the men, clearly agitated, took a gun from his colleague, ducked his head around the wall and fired a random shot, she said. "Immediately after this, the gun was thrust back at the other man and they both ran away very fast the way they had come."
Ms Harkin said she believed he was shooting at a soldier who was edging along a wall at Glenfada Park.
"I have to say we thought that he was firing at the soldier that we saw going along the wall, but I mean it was a really wild shot," she said.
But Mr Seamus Treacy, representing some of the families, questioned her recollection of events.
Mr Treacy pointed out that there would have been a large number of soldiers in the area at the time, and it would have been suicidal to fire off a shot.
He suggested it was "inherently unlikely that someone would place themself in a position of such obvious danger".
Ms Harkin accepted it was a reckless act but said the two young men ran away from the area very quickly. She added that the incident occurred quite late on, and it was possible many soldiers had moved away from the area by then.
The inquiry is investigating the events of January 30th, 1972, when 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead by members of the Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march in Derry's Bogside.
Ms Harkin took part in the march with her mother, a brother and a friend from art college. She recalled an army Saracen coming into the area to deal with the bodies at the rubble barricade.
"The bodies were picked up as if they were carcasses or sacks of potatoes and literally thrown into the back of the Saracens," she said.