Taxi-driver tells of how soldiers forced him at gunpoint to drive around block

A taxi-driver described being taken on a bizarre journey at gunpoint on Bloody Sunday before being charged at an army base with…

A taxi-driver described being taken on a bizarre journey at gunpoint on Bloody Sunday before being charged at an army base with riotous behaviour - a charge that was never proceeded with.

Mr Patrick Norris, a driver for Foyle Taxis at the time, said that on January 30th, 1972, he got a call in the afternoon to go to Glenfada Park in the Bogside to pick up a fare.

Driving down from the Creggan, he was stopped on William Street by soldiers who searched his taxi and then made him get back into the driving seat.

"One of the soldiers got in beside me and pointed his gun at me," said Mr Norris. "The other soldiers put three other people in the back of the taxi. I had no idea who these people were". He described being made to drive around the block, in the course of which the wife of the owner of the taxi firm saw the taxi and flagged it down.

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"Obviously she wanted to know what was happening, but the soldier simply told her to go away ... he swore at her," Mr Norris said.

The car was stopped and he was put on a three-tonne truck with other people. "I was kneeling on the floor with my hands over my head, and I was absolutely terrified. As far as I was concerned, I was being taken out of the city and may have been about to be shot".

He was taken to a warehouse in Fort George base and put in a wire pen inside the building. He said: "I had no idea what was going to happen to me, why I had been arrested or what the other people with me had done. At this stage, I still had no idea that there had been any trouble in Derry or that people had been shot and killed."

Later that evening, Mr Norris was released, but a wedding ring, watch and sum of money that had been taken from him earlier were never returned. He later received a letter saying all charges against him had been dropped, and a further letter enclosing £16 or £17 in compensation for lost property.

Another witness, Mr Martin Hegarty, described how he was using his 8mm cine camera to take film of the Civil Rights marches before hearing shouts that the soldiers were coming into the Bogside.

"Self-preservation set in," he said yesterday. "I knew that my cine camera was of such a size and shape that it could easily be mistaken for a handgun, and therefore I put it back in its camera bag very quickly and ran." He said that after Bloody Sunday he sent the film into Kodak for development, but received a letter back saying that it was 'undevelopable'. This had never happened to him before.

The inquiry continues today.