A witness at the Bloody Sunday inquiry described yesterday how an impulse caused him to flee the area where he sheltered from shooting while a friend, who remained behind, was shot dead soon afterwards.
Mr Jim Doherty told how he hid behind a garden fence in Glenfada Park in the Bogside while intensive firing continued in nearby Rossville Street. With him was a former work colleague, Mr Gerard McKinney.
"While we were hiding there, Gerry asked me, `What's happening?' " Mr Doherty said. "A young lad . . . came up and told us that there were people lying dead in front of the rubble barricade (in Rossville Street).
"When I heard that, I told Gerry that I was going to get out of there. I didn't go out to look at the barricade. Instead, I ran through the south-west entrance . . . At this point I was on my own. I had been in Glenfada Park North for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes before I decided to leave."
After returning home safely, he found out that Mr McKinney had been killed. "He was an innocent man," the witness said.
Mr Doherty and several other witnesses gave further accounts of the circumstances in which the first two victims that day, the youth, Damien Donaghy, and an older man, Mr John Johnston, were shot and wounded in the William Street area before the paratroopers entered the Bogside.
Mr Johnston died five months later. Mr Doherty said he was directly behind both men when they were shot.
They were simply standing and looking across William Street. The witness said he assumed at the time the shots that hit them were fired by soldiers he had seen on the roof of the Post Office building.
Mrs Monica McDaid, who was a 42-year-old mother of six at the time, also witnessed these early shootings. She said Damien Donaghy had run to retrieve a rubber bullet when he was shot.
She and her husband left the area and hurried towards Fahan Street, where they met Father Anthony Mulvey and a local MP, Mr Eddie McAteer.
"Father Mulvey pulled me down and said, `Monica get down - they're shooting from the walls'," Mrs McDaid said. "This shooting occurred about 20 minutes after the shootings in William Street. There was lots of continuous firing."
Mr John McGee described coming upon two bodies, those of Mr Jim Wray and Mr William McKinney, in Glenfada Park. He sat on the ground in a daze beside Mr Wray, who had been at school with him, and he picked up the victim's watch which had come off and was damaged.
He also picked up a small brown-handled steak knife and a couple of pebbles. He told Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of the soldiers, that he still did not know why he did so.
The inquiry has now heard evidence from almost 40 witnesses, primarily concerned with sector 1 of Bloody Sunday - the events, including the first two gunshot woundings, which occurred before the troops rushed into the Bogside and most of the killings ensued.
The inquiry continues today.