First Bloody Sunday death 'unjustified'

Jack Duddy was carried away by a group led by a priest

Civilian witness accounts suggest the first person shot dead in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday was killed without justification, it was claimed at the Saville Inquiry.

But the inquiry was also told on Tuesday that no clear picture had yet emerged of who may have fired the shot which killed 17-year-old Jack Duddy in the car park of Rossville Flats on 30 January, 1972.

The death of Mr Duddy has come to be the defining image of Bloody Sunday as a camera crew and photographer captured on film his body being carried by a group of men, led by Father Edward Daly waving a white handkerchief.

The Saville Inquiry, which is being held at Derry's Guildhall, is investigating events when British paratroopers opened fire on a banned civil rights procession in the city's Bogside, killing 14 people.

Christopher Clarke QC is presenting the evidence gathered so far

On the eighteenth day of the tribunal's public hearings, counsel to the inquiry Christopher Clarke QC said : "The general picture given by these civilian witnesses is of Jack Duddy falling, having been fired upon with no apparent justification arising from any conduct of his.

"Indeed the explicit evidence of Father Daly is that he was doing nothing more than run away from the army into the car park."

There was also some evidence to suggest that he was someone who had taken part in rioting and may have been about to confront a soldier with a stone, he added.

'Sickened by actions of army'

Earlier, the inquiry heard the evidence of Derek Tucker, an ex-serviceman living in Rossville Flats who had photographed the movement of hundreds of people into the car park as army vehicles approached.

Mr Tucker, who has since died, served for three years in the Royal Navy and 13 in the RAF, Mr Clarke said, and he had claimed to have seen the teenager shot without provocation as he fled.

His testimony to the Widgery Inquiry of 1972 was read out, recounting that he had withdrawn into his flat as events unfolded because he had felt "sickened and degraded by the actions of the British Army against innocent civilians".

Most of those whose statements were read out on Tuesday claimed the victim was empty-handed when he was shot.

However, one who claimed to have been near him and recalled seeing "a gush of blood" coming from the left hand side of his chest as he was shot, saw a stone in his right hand when he looked at the body lying on the ground.

Another civilian witness, Brian Johnston, also spoke of Mr Duddy hitting the ground and his right hand opening to show a pebble "the size of a bead" inside.

Lord Saville: heading the inquiry at Derry's Guildhall

He later concluded it was scooped into the teenager's hand by the fall.

But at the time, his statement recorded: "I remember thinking, my God, were you going to take on the might of the British Army with a pebble?"

The tribunal, headed by Lord Saville, is expected to sit for two years.

No-one can be prosecuted on the strength of evidence submitted to the inquiry, which was set up by the government solely to find the truth of what happened on Bloody Sunday.

The Widgery Inquiry held shortly after the shootings in 1972, exonerated the soldiers involved, who said they had been fired on by the IRA, before they themselves opened fire.