Survivor curious how soldier who shot him sleeps

A man who suffered serious bullet wounds on Bloody Sunday admitted that curiosity drove him to return to the firing zone from…

A man who suffered serious bullet wounds on Bloody Sunday admitted that curiosity drove him to return to the firing zone from a position of relative safety after was told someone had been shot dead.

Mr Michael Bradley told the inquiry he would love to meet, face to face, the soldier who shot him. He would ask him how he had slept for all the intervening years.

Mr Bradley described how he reached the gable wall of Rossville Flats after running from the advancing soldiers. He had paused, winded, as other people continued running past.

"I remember wondering why they were running, as the army would only be firing rubber bullets. I had no fear for my life; I just wasn't sure why they were so terrified," he said.

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A woman told him there was a young man lying dead in the car park. When he heard this he got to his feet and went back to that area, because he was curious. "It was so unbelievable that they would be firing live bullets."

When he became aware that the body of Jack Duddy, a youth he knew personally, was lying there, he "just lost it," Mr Bradley said. "I just went berserk and started screaming and swearing at the soldiers." He felt a thud on his right arm and saw blood streaming down.

He told Mr Christopher Clarke QC, for the tribunal, that he had no recollection now of throwing stones at the soldiers. The witness agreed that in interviews recorded in subsequent years he appeared to have mentioned picking up stones to throw. He had no recollection of it, "but I make no apologies if I did throw a stone," he said. "Was I shot for throwing a stone?"

Counsel said he did not know why the witness had been shot, but it might be that in due course somebody would give evidence that he saw somebody throwing something and shot, "and we need to know what the position was that presented itself to the soldiers."

Mr Bradley, who was 22 at the time, had severe wounds in both arms and in the chest. Counsel said medical evidence was that it was impossible to say whether he had been shot by one bullet or more than one.

Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of soldiers, told Mr Bradley: "I will not suggest that your possession of a brick or anything like that, if you had one, justified your being shot."

Another witness, Mr Thomas Dawe, gave evidence of firing coming from the direction of the City Walls as he and others made their way along an alleyway below the walls. He saw "clods of earth and grass being churned up by the shots" and earth was showering down onto people from an embankment above their heads.

Mr Dawe, who served 10 years in the British navy, described how shots hit the ground beside him and forced him to retreat when he crawled out with a white towel to help somebody who was injured.

The inquiry continues today.