All the civilian witnesses who saw 17-year-old Jack Duddy shot dead by soldiers on Bloody Sunday, including many who were very close to where he was, say he was fired on with no justification, the inquiry heard yesterday.
In an exhaustive examination of the evidence gathered so far in relation to the death of the teenager in the car-park behind Rossville flats, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, sought to identify which soldiers might have fired the fatal shot.
Jack Duddy was the first fatal victim in the Bloody Sunday shootings on January 30th, 1972, in which 13 others were killed and 13 injured when British army paratroops opened fire after a civil rights march.
His is the body carried out of the Bogside by a group of men led by Father Edward Daly waving a white handkerchief, in the photographic image that has become synonymous with Bloody Sunday Summing up the large body of witness evidence, Mr Clarke remarked: "One can see that, although the picture is not clear as to who shot Jack Duddy, and there are a number of different categories of evidence, the general picture given by these civilian witnesses is of [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 carpark of Rossville flats.
"There is some evidence that he was someone who took part in rioting, and some evidence that he had or might have intended to challenge the soldiers with a stone."
Although most witnesses said he had nothing in his hands, one said that as he lay on the ground there was a stone in his hand, but another witness described that as "a pebble the size of a bead" and thought that it must have been scooped up as he fell.
This witness, Mr Brian Johnston, in his statement said: "I remember thinking `My God, did you think you were going to take on the mighty British army with a pebble?' "
Counsel returned to the evidence concerning the wounding of Michael Bridge when he shouted abuse at the soldiers after seeing Jack Duddy shot.
Mr Paul Whoriskey, in a statement, said he was standing next to Bridge: "Mickey and I were shouting `Stop shooting'. Mickey was extremely angry and he shouted at the soldier `Shoot us, you bastards'. At this point the soldier stopped and aimed his rifle at us. I thought to myself `Speak for yourself'.
"Suddenly a shot rang out. I felt it was aimed at both of us and thought it was fired by the soldier at the northern gable end of Block 1 of the Rossville flats. At that point Mickey went down and I saw that he had been hit in the leg."
In relation to another incident, Mr Clarke quoted the statement of a soldier of the 2nd Royal Green Jackets who was at a barrier in Waterloo Street when the body of Jack Duddy was carried up the street.
He said: "There were about six or eight people with the body. I think they knelt down and said prayers over the body as it lay there . . . Some people came up to the barricade and accused one of the lads in our section of shooting the person . . .
"The lieutenant looked into the soldier's rifle to see that it was cleared and that there was nothing in the spout. He also checked the rifle and made sure that it had not been fired. He gave the rifle back to the soldier and told the civilians in no uncertain terms to get on their bike . . .
"We were sure that there had not been any firing that day that could have caused the death. By then we had only heard the occasional shot and I do not recall having heard any return fire and we did not believe that the military were involved in the death. I remember that someone jokingly said that they must have got the body out of the freezer."
Mr Clarke commented: "In some of the papers that one sees a rumour seems to have begun to circulate that the IRA, or someone sympathetic to them, had brought out a body of a dead person who had not been killed on Bloody Sunday and had placed it in the streets. It looks very much as if this is the genesis of the rumour and an illustration of how wildly inaccurate rumours circulate."