Bloody Sunday witness 'feels guilt to this day'
A man has told the Bloody Sunday inquiry how he has carried the guilt of surviving the events after seeing a former classmate shot dead beside him.
Terence McClements from Derry said he was shoulder-to-shoulder with unarmed Jack Duddy, when the teenager was felled by a bullet.
Mr Duddy, 17, was the first person killed on Bloody Sunday and was the casualty filmed being carried away.
Mr McClements, also 17, said he was fleeing troops advancing into the city's Bogside following a civil rights march when "suddenly Jackie pitched forward and fell on his mouth and nose with his arms outstretched. I thought he had tripped and cannot recall hearing shots".
He added: "It all seemed to happen in slow motion. I ran on for a few feet and stopped. My intention was to return to Jackie, but then I heard a voice shouting, 'Don't stop' and 'Keep running'.
"I was torn between running and going back to check on Jackie. However, as I could now hear shooting all around, my instinct for self-preservation took over and I ran".
The account was not recorded in a statement he gave shortly after the killings, but explaining the discrepancy, he said: "To this day I have felt guilt, because: why me and not someone else?
"But I saw what I saw. I saw Jack Duddy getting shot down, unarmed, not two feet from me, for no reason other than he was running away. I still can't understand to this day why it happened."
