A witness said yesterday that a paratrooper fired a shot as a group of civilians tried to rescue an elderly man who was being kicked and punched by soldiers.
Mr Joe Nicholas said that as he passed the opening of a short street linking Chamberlain Street with waste ground at Eden Place, "in the gap I saw three or four paratroopers beating an old man".
He said: "The old man had grey hair. He was still on his feet but was bent over. His head was down. The paras were whacking him with their rifle butts and kicking and punching him.
"Together with a few others from the crowd, I advanced towards [them] to try to rescue the old man. I managed to get hold of his arm. I was trying to pull him away from the soldiers . . . but suddenly I was aware of one of the paras bringing his rifle up and firing a shot . . . I immediately retreated towards Chamberlain Street."
Mr Nicholas said he could see where the bullet had hit the brick above the ground floor window of a nearby house. He told Mr Christopher Clarke QC, for the tribunal, that about 20 to 30 others were with him as he tried to rescue the man.
Another witness described arriving at the same corner in Chamberlain Street at what appears to be an earlier stage in events. Mr Willie Healy said that he was with only four or five others as he stood at the corner and, looking through the gap, saw two Saracen armoured cars arrive on the waste ground.
The back doors of the closest Saracen opened and he saw two paratroopers jump out.
"I saw a man run up to the two paras," said Mr Healy. "He was in his 20s. He seemed to be incensed and had his hand raised. I thought at the time he was going to punch the paras but he did not have a chance to do this because he was hit by one of the soldiers with the butt of a rifle and fell to the ground.
"The soldier . . . then saw the group of us standing at the bookies [corner] and fired a shot towards us . . . the two paras started running towards us . . . I ran down Chamberlain Street."
These two witnesses also described seeing the body of Mr Paddy Doherty, one of the fatalities on the day, to the south of Block 2 of the Rossville Flats.
Mr Nicholas said he was actually watching as Mr Doherty crawled across an open area from the flats to an alleyway behind neighbouring maisonettes on Joseph Place.
"He got about two-thirds of the way across the gap . . . when he was shot," said the witness. "I knew he had been shot because I saw the right-hand side of the back of his coat lift up. He then collapsed on to his face and lay still."
Mr Nicholas also described seeing a civilian gunman sometime before that at the south end of Chamberlain Street. "After Michael Bridge was shot, I practically bumped into a male civilian with a gun," he said. "He was on his own. He was holding the gun in his hand and he had his arm down by his side . . . It was a small hand gun. I did not know who he was. I did not see him shoot the gun and do not know where he went."