A witness wept today as he described cries and groans coming from a British army Saracen vehicle where the body of a Bloody Sunday victim had been thrown by "laughing" paratroopers.
Mr William Patrick McDonagh was overcome as he told the Saville Inquiry about hearing the sounds as he stood at a window of Derry's Rossville Flats overlooking the scene of the killings 29 years ago.
Three of the 13 killed in British army gunfire on January 30th, 1972, are known to have been carried from the rubble barricade where they fell and put in the back of a military personnel carrier. They were William Nash, Michael McDaid and John Young.
Mr McDonagh told the inquiry at Derry's Guildhall that he saw one body lifted by two soldiers - one holding it by the collar, the other by the belt - and then thrown into the vehicle feet first. He said the soldiers were "laughing".
Earlier he spoke of seeing the shooting of another of the dead, Jackie Duddy, in the car park of the flats as he saw a soldier fire two or three live rounds towards a crowd running away from him.
"The next thing I remember is seeing a boy fall," he said.
Mr McDonagh said he moved to another room in the flat overlooking Rossville Street and the rubble barricade where he saw two or three soldiers take aim and fire south towards Free Derry Corner, scene of a civil rights rally.
"The shooting was very intensive and I thought it would never stop. I had not seen anything being done by the crowd in Rossville Street to explain why the army fired.
"As I heard the shots, I saw a boy clutch his leg and fall down to my left. I think he fall backwards and that he clutched his right leg," he said.
"I only saw him very quickly and cannot describe him at all. I think that I was in shock from what I had already seen in the courtyard."
PA