A pharmacist who rendered first aid to a woman shot in the leg on Bloody Sunday recounted today how he was taken prisoner by troops after she was placed on an ambulance.
Mr Otto Schlindwein claimed he later told the circumstances of his arrest to an RUC man and showed him his blood-smeared hands - but the officer ordered for him to be charged with riotous behaviour.
Mr Schlindwein, who was 44 at the time of Bloody Sunday, admitted throwing stones during the troubles in Derry's Bogside district on the afternoon of January 30th, 1972.
He told the Saville inquiry that he was called into a house on Chamberlain Street where widowed mother-of-14 Peggy Deery lay wounded.
"I could see immediately that she had been shot and from the way in which she was losing blood, I feared for her life," he stated.
"I bound up her leg wound with a blanket and then told Mrs Nelis that Mrs Deery needed an ambulance as a matter of urgency."
Once Mrs Deery was put in the ambulance he was arrested in the street and another 23 men inside the house were rounded up, detained with him and driven to Fort George Army Barracks.
Mr Schlindwein said he was taken into an office and questioned by two plain-clothes RUC men, the more senior of whom asked what he had been doing when arrested. "I told him that I was giving first aid to the woman who had been shot. He asked to see my hands and I showed them to him. They were obviously still covered in Mrs Deery's blood and were also quite grimy from where I had been kneeling down on the ground.
"The senior officer turned to the junior officer and told him to charge me with riotous behaviour. I was asked at some stage to give my name and address and did so.
"Apart from that, I was not given any opportunity to make a statement to say what had happened to me."
Charges against all those arrested on Bloody Sunday were later dropped.
PA
