A witness who conceded he had been a "hard-core rioter" said yesterday he and a number of others like him had been looking for "a showdown" with the British army on Bloody Sunday and he was angry he could not get petrol bombs or nail bombs.
Mr Paddy McCauley, who was then aged 16, said he and other like-minded youths had been attacked by the army at Magilligan beach on the previous Sunday "and had the shit beaten out of us".
He continued: "We had no stones with which to defend ourselves and nowhere to run, except [into] the sea. We were therefore going to get our revenge on January 30th [1972] by attending the march and forcing our way through to the Guildhall Square."
In the event, they did not have the force of numbers to breach the army barrier and it became clear the initiative had been lost. He walked away into the Bogside.
Later, after high-velocity firing broke out, he was near an alleyway into Glenfada Park when he saw a soldier with his foot on the body of a man lying on his side. He now knew this man to have been the late Mr Jim Wray.
He said another man, Mr Gerard McKinney, ran past him towards the soldier and Mr Wray, holding his hands in the air and shouting "don't shoot" or "don't shoot him". In what seemed to be one movement, he said, the soldier shot Mr Wray on the ground, then spun to his right and shot in the direction of himself and Mr McKinney. Mr McKinney fell and lay sprawled and moaning.
Mr Gerry McLaughlin, who was also aged 16 on the day, described how bullets hit the ground ahead of him and a friend, Dan McCluskey, as they ran away. He could not understand why his friend was laughing continually, until "I realised that he was not laughing at me; he had flipped".
Two weeks after Bloody Sunday his friend had psychiatric treatment in Gransha Hospital. After his release, his mother had to ask for him to be taken back for further help. "He had totally flipped".
Although his friend was still alive, Mr McLaughlin said: "We spent 15 years in the same street, living three doors apart. We went to school together, but he doesn't know who I am. I blame what happened on Bloody Sunday for this."
The inquiry yesterday heard an application for anonymity on behalf of a witness who is alleged to have told the RUC in an interview that he fired two full magazines of ammunition from a carbine on Bloody Sunday. Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, said the witness had made a statement denying this allegation and saying he had no knowledge of the interview.
The chairman, Lord Saville, said it appeared the redactions and secrecy sought in the application could mean that the inquiry could not use the relevant information in the document publicly, nor could they use it in their final report. The tribunal adjourned further consideration of the application, pending a ruling on Friday by the High Court in London on the venue for hearing soldiers' oral evidence.