Victim 'killed helping others'

The inquiry is looking into events on Bloody Sunday

A witness has told the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings that one of the victims may have been shot dead while trying to help others.

Matthew Connolly told the Saville Inquiry that he witnessed the death of 17-year-old John Young.

The inquiry is investigating the events of 30 January 1972 when paratroopers opened fired on civil rights marchers in the city killing 13 men. Another man died later.

Mr Connolly said he was with Mr Young earlier on the day of the shootings.

He said he saw the youth leaving the shelter of a gable wall and moving towards the spot where another man had been shot minutes earlier, only to fall to the ground himself, fatally injured.

The 17-year-old was among the six victims shot at or near the rubble barricade across Rossville Street.

Lord Saville: Heading inquiry

Mr Connolly said he was standing at the barricade with others, some of whom were throwing stones, when "a small boy in front of me jumped and screamed as if he had been shot".

He said the youth - who fitted other witnesses' descriptions of the fatally injured Michael Kelly had been shot in the chest.

The witness said that after trying to help the youth, he and the others retreated behind a gable wall as a volley of shots came close to them.

Moments later he saw Mr Young, followed by another man, moving out on their hunkers towards where the injured man lay.

"The first man I had seen then fell over... I then saw plainly and I saw that he was John Young. He had been shot in the head," Mr Connolly said.

"Immediately after this, the second man who had been behind John Young seemed to stumble ... I assumed he had been shot."

When questioned by Arthur Harvey QC, acting for most of the relatives of the dead, he said that Mr Young may have been trying to help another of the victims - Alexander Nash - rather than Michael Kelly.

Mr Connolly is the first witness to give a clear description of Mr Young's death.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 and started taking oral evidence in March 2000.

It is expected to last two years.