Saville: Soldier fired on priest running to victim’s aid
The former Bishop of Derry was fired at by a soldier as he ran to the aid of a fatally wounded teenager on Bloody Sunday, the Saville Inquiry has heard.
Sean Collins told the inquiry that Fr Edward Daly (later to become the city’s Catholic Bishop) came under fire while waving a white hanky as he went to help 17-year-old Jackie Duddy, the youngest of the 13 civilians shot dead in Derry’s Bogside on January 1972.
Mr Duddy was gunned down as he ran alongside Fr Daly into the Rossville Street flats car park after Paratroopers were deployed in the area during an anti-internment march.
Mr Collins told the inquiry’s three judges, sitting in Derry’s Guildhall, that he witnessed the incident, one of the defining images of the day, from the bedroom window of his home in the flats complex overlooking the car park.
He said a soldier fired a shot at the upper floors of the flats after milk bottles were thrown at soldiers next to a personnel carrier below.
‘‘As soon as the milk bottle hit the bonnet of the Pig, both soldiers took a firing position and pointed their rifles up towards the upper floors of Block 1 and the taller soldier nearest to Block 1 fired his rifle.
‘‘It was an aimed shot, not just a firing in the air. I did not see where the shot hit, I believe this soldier fired a cluster of shots. I remember hearing at least two, one of them definitely shot by him’’, he said.
Mr Collins said he then noticed Jackie Duddy running across the car park towards the gap between Blocks 1 and 2.
‘‘I do not recall seeing anything in his hands’’, he said.
‘‘I took my eye off him because the next thing I noticed was another soldier, not one of the ones I had seen before, in a firing position on one knee facing south west towards the gap between Blocks 1 and 2 of the Rossville Flats. He was next to the left front wheel of the Pig’’, he told the judges.
‘‘I have a picture in my mind of this soldier wearing a pot type helmet, although I do not know whether this is accurate or not.
‘‘The images in my mind involve the Paras at Bloody Sunday and my picture of this soldier is my main image of the day. I watched him fire at least one shot towards the gap between Blocks 1 and 2 of the Rossville Flats’’, he said.
‘‘I then looked back to where the young man had been running and all I could see was a body lying on the ground. I am not certain this was the man I had earlier seen running across the car park and stumbling, but I think it was.
‘‘I subsequently discovered that the body was Jackie Duddy whom I did not know’’, the witness added.
‘‘The next thing I noticed was our family priest, Fr Daly, trying to run out from the gap between Block 1 and 2 of the Rossville Flats to aid the boy. My recollection is that he was waving a hanky as he was trying to reach the body. I think that Fr Daly was facing towards the soldier on one knee to the left front wheel of the Pig.
‘‘It appeared to me that the soldier was aiming and firing shots at Fr Daly now, but I assume if he had been, then from that distance he would have hit him. Each time Fr Daly tried to go towards the body, the soldier seemed to shoot at him.
‘‘The soldier was right handed and I remember hearing and seeing at least four shots being fired in Fr Daly’s direction. This made me very angry and I became extremely upset at the prospect of our family priest being shot dead’’, he said.
Meanwhile the inquiry is due to hear evidence tomorrow from leading Ulster Unionist Lord Kilclooney, who at the time of Bloody Sunday was a junior minister attached to the Home Affairs Ministry.
