One of the Knights of Malta personnel who treated injured or dying people on Bloody Sunday described yesterday how a soldier fired a rubber bullet into her face at close range. Ms Rosemary Doyle said she was in medical uniform at the time and wearing a gas mask. The rubber bullet hit the side of the mask and cracked some teeth. She was with two other first-aid personnel when the incident happened as paratroopers invaded the Bogside on January 30th, 1972. "I don't understand why the soldier fired at me," she said. "We were clearly identifiable as Knights of Malta by our uniforms."
Ms Doyle, who was 19 at the time, recalled going to a house and treating two of the 13 people who died that day, Jim Wray and Michael Kelly.
She accompanied Mr Wray to hospital in an ambulance. He was declared dead on arrival and his body was transferred to the morgue, where she remembered encountering "an aggressive policeman who used abusive language".
Mr Edmund Lawson QC, for soldiers, said statements by two other witnesses referred to being with Ms Doyle when a rubber bullet was fired from one of two or more Saracens as it passed by. He said there was a difference between a rubber baton round being fired from a moving Saracen and one fired at point-blank range by a soldier outside the Saracen.
Mr Seamus McConnell said he had vivid memories of certain events on Bloody Sunday, although he was only 6-1/2. The next day, he saw a group of men outside Rossville Flats standing near a pool of blood. They did not notice him pushing his way into the group. He looked into a matchbox which one of the men was holding and saw an eyelash was in it. He heard later it was an eyelash of one of the victims, Barney McGuigan. The inquiry adjourned until Monday.