A Former Derry City professional footballer told the inquiry yesterday that he believed the drivers of British armoured vehicles deliberately tried to run people down on Bloody Sunday.
Mr Frank Campbell, who was a youth worker at the time, had run into the Rossville Flats car-park with many other civilians as the paratroopers invaded the Bogside.
He said Saracen armoured cars were "flying down" into Rossville Street. "They were deliberately driving at people," he said. "I was amazed how under the rule of law people could do this sort of thing."
A couple of Saracens kept driving around the waste ground, and others stopped in the area of the car-park. It appeared to him that the ones driving around in circles were trying to knock people down.
The witness said one vehicle struck a teenage girl, Alana Burke. She was running away, and the Saracen hit her a glancing blow. "If it had hit her full on, it would have killed her," he said.
It then drove at her again, and at this point he caught her and ran with her behind a wall in the car-park.
Mr Campbell said he saw others being hit by Saracens, and he could not understand why the soldiers were doing this if they just wanted to arrest people.
Another witness, Mr Brendan Harley, who was 13 and a member of the Air Force Cadets in Derry at the time, said he first heard shots when the Saracens arrived in Rossville Street.
"Within seconds of the Saracens stopping, at least one soldier was firing as if he was on a `pigeon shoot' . . . He was shooting from the hip southwards down Rossville Street without aiming properly."
There was disarray at the rubble barricade in Rossville Street, with about a dozen people trying to scramble over it. He was not sure whether the people he saw falling over the barricade had been shot or were diving for cover.
He said he saw no one firing missiles at the soldiers from the barricade, nor did he see any civilian with a gun.
Mrs Kathleen Crossan said she was 15 or 16 at the time. As she and a friend watched the crowds gather in the Creggan there was a really good, positive atmosphere. This changed as they approached the junction of William and Rossville Streets.
She said she felt real fear when she saw soldiers to her left and right. They were "angry-looking, as if they were ready for action", she said.
She turned into Rossville Street and as she started to walk south along it "the army came in and everyone started to run".
She glanced behind and saw some soldiers drop on to one knee and take up firing positions. She was running for her life, and as she clambered over the barricade she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a boy fall. She believed at the time he was shot in the back by one of the soldiers.
In reply to Lord Gifford QC, for the family of James Wray, she confirmed that when she reached the Rossville Street junction there were already some soldiers deployed on foot there, and there were some Saracens in the area. She agreed it might follow from this that when she reached the junction the first two Saracens had already gone through and on to the waste ground.
Mrs Patricia Campbell said she had a vivid memory of an armoured car reversing up to the rubble barricade at one point, and of soldiers picking up the bodies of three young men by their arms and legs and throwing them into the back of the vehicle.