One of the victims of Bloody Sunday ran "like the Devil" and was just short of escaping when he was shot in the back, it was claimed today.
He was with two other men who were gunned down as they fled troops empty-handed across Derry's Glenfada Park North, Mr John McCrudden told the Saville Inquiry.
Mr McCrudden, who was 12 years old on Bloody Sunday, claimed he saw four people shot and three of the casualties lying wounded or dead as he watched events from the window of his family home in the Rossville Flats in the Bogside area.
He did not identify the victims in Glenfada Park but where they fell corresponded with the positions of two of the dead, Mr Jim Wray and Mr William McKinney and one of the injured, Mr Joseph Mahon - who alleges he played dead and watched Mr Wray being "finished off" as he lay injured on the ground.
Mr McCrudden said one of the three "had run like the Devil but did not quite make it through the gap. I am certain that these men had no weapons; they had nothing at all in their hands".
He claimed to have seen a man shot and another lying wounded in the car park of the flats complex - scene of one death and at least three injuries - from the back of his family home.
Mr McCrudden also recalled a man carrying a pistol in the car park - the same figure already described by retired Bishop of Derry Dr Edward Daly - and of hearing people shout at him to put the weapon away.
During Mr McCrudden's evidence a tape recording of the sounds of bullets entering the living room of the his flat were replayed to the inquiry.
A tape recording by journalist Ms Susan North captured the frightened retreat by Mr McCrudden's mother Lily, and three sisters, Louise, Adeline and Margaret, from the room while an Army recruitment television advert played in the background.
Ms North and photographer Mr Fulvio Grimaldi, who had been admitted to flat to use the telephone, could also be heard in the room.
Mr McCrudden's claimed Mr Grimaldi opened a window overlooking the rubble barricade across Rossville Street and part of Glenfada Park North when the shots were directed into the flat.
A photograph showed six bullet holes in the glass. Ms North's recording captured the shots ringing out, which Mr McCrudden claimed shattered on impact.
PA