A Derry priest successfully intervened as soldiers threatened to shoot a group of civilians they were holding at gunpoint on Bloody Sunday, the inquiry heard yesterday.
Mr Brendan O'Connor said in his statement that the late Father Anthony Mulvey, a curate at St Eugene's Cathedral, told the soldiers: "If you shoot them, then you must also shoot me."
Father Mulvey had run out of the Parochial House as Mr O'Connor and several others were being held against the railings of the cathedral. The witness said the soldiers were accusing them of having come from the civil rights march.
"I think that the soldiers had come from the Bogside as I got the impression that they had seen some action and wanted more," he said.
"They appeared to be frenzied and out of control . . . They were effing and blinding at us and saying things like `Shoot the bastards', `Scum', and `Will we shoot them?'. They were making fun of us but I got the distinct impression that we would certainly be shot."
Father Mulvey ran out and demanded to speak to the soldier in charge. The witness said the priest vouched for them and said he would take the matter further if they were not let go. The priest then told the civilians to get in their car and go home, and the soldiers made no attempt to stop them.
Another witness, Ms Clare Cregan, described how, as she ran away from Free Derry Corner towards the Brandywell district, she heard "a sharp whistle" and something flew very quickly past her at about thigh height.
Shortly afterwards she found that a hole had been scorched in the right side of her coat. "At the time, I was certain that the bullet I had felt shoot past me had made the hole. I am still certain that this is what happened."
Mr Eamonn McCourt said that as he ran away from the area during a lull in the shooting, he saw a car near the gas yard on the Lecky Road. There were men in it whom he knew from local knowledge to be members of the IRA.
"... as I ran past they asked me what was going on. I replied, `They are trying to kill us'. "
Mr McCourt said that at the time he was 22 and had a job as a fitter in a Protestant firm, where he was the only Catholic. He did not go to work for three days until after the funerals of the Bloody Sunday victims.
"When I did go, I could not believe the bitterness amongst Protestants," he said. "They thought that the people who had been shot were IRA members and [that] they deserved to be shot. I was extremely angry about this. I was on the march and I could have been killed; I certainly was not an IRA member."
The inquiry will resume on Tuesday.