Saville Inquiry: Youth asked protesters to back off
One of the youths shot dead on Bloody Sunday pleaded with people to back off from a confrontation with troops earlier that day, the inquiry into the killings heard today.
John Young, 17, was seen urging the crowd back from Barrier 14 on Londonderry’s William Street, which blocked the path of marchers on a civil rights demonstration on January 30 1972, according to Noel Doherty.
Mr Young was one of the 13 men shot and killed later that afternoon when Paratroopers opened fire inside the city’s Bogside district during what was a designated arrest operation.
Mr Doherty told the inquiry at the Guildhall, Derry: ‘‘There was a lot of talking and debating amongst the crowd at the barricade.
‘‘Many of us were adamant that we would get through the barricade. At the time stewards were coming up to the barricade to try to persuade the crowd to go to Free Derry Corner for a meeting.
‘I can recall seeing John Young pleading with people to go down to Free Derry Corner and to move back.
‘‘I knew John Young, who was at school with my brother. Also, he worked in a clothes shop in the town and had measured me for a suit. John Young was killed later that day.’’
Mr Doherty, who was 16 on Bloody Sunday, later identified Mr Young from photographs of the disturbances near the barrier taken roughly 10 minutes before the soldiers moved in.
Questioned by Edmund Lawson QC, acting for more than 400 of the soldiers, he maintained Mr Young had been trying to stop the trouble.
When Mr Lawson asked: ‘‘Having failed, he decided to join in?’’, Mr Doherty replied: ‘‘It looks like that, yeah.’’
Mr Doherty also told day 82 of the inquiry’s public hearings of bullets whizzing over his head as he tended to the dying Jackie Duddy, 17 the first to be killed that day who was later carried through the Bogside with the then Fr Edward Daly in front waving a white handkerchief.
He said he saw a soldier open fire ‘‘in a diagonal line’’ across the car park of the Rossville Flats as the crowd ran from advancing soldiers, heard five or six shots go past him and saw that the teenager had fallen.
‘‘Eventually, along with three or four other men, crouching down with my hands in the air, I made my way over to the boy who has fallen,’’ he said.
‘‘When I reached him, I knelt down beside him on his right side. All the while I had my hands in the air. When I got to him, the boy was having trouble breathing.
‘‘While kneeling at his side I saw the same soldier open fire once more. I saw his rifle jerk and about five or six shots rang out which I felt were aimed me as the bullets whizzed over my head.
‘While this was going on, people were trying to administer first aid to the young man who had been shot.’’
Questioned by Counsel to the Inquiry Christopher Clarke QC, Mr Doherty said he had no recollection of the troops having come under attack.
The tribunal, of Lord Saville of Newdigate and two other Commonwealth judges, was established three years ago to conduct a fresh probe into events surrounding Bloody Sunday and has been sitting in public since March last year.
