Saville Inquiry: Man pushed woman into open ground

The inquiry heard evidence from a man who said he pushed one of the Bloody Sunday wounded into open ground seconds before she was shot.

Peter Gallagher - who said he was an alcoholic - gave a detailed account of the wounding of mother of 14, Peggy Deery, the only woman shot on Bloody Sunday.

Mrs Deery made a full recovery but has since died.

Mr Gallagher told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in Derry’s Guildhall he still had recurring nightmares about but the shooting dead of 13 anti-internment protesters by British paratroopers in 1972.

He said he was standing beside Mrs Deery along with a number of other people behind a gable wall moments before she was shot. He said there was a lot of pushing and shoving within the crowd.

Describing himself as ‘‘the weakest link’’ in the crowd, Mr Gallagher said he was responsible for Mrs Deery being pushed from cover on to open ground.

Seconds later she was shot.

‘‘She had been shot in the back of her thigh. I remember that she was wearing fishnet stockings. At first there was just a very small hole in her stockings and then the flesh just seemed to fall apart as if her leg had been cut with a knife from the back of her knee to her thigh,’’ he said.

The witness also saw the shooting of Jackie Duddy earlier in the day. He said the teenager ‘‘spun like a ballerina and his chest just exploded with blood’’.

Under cross examination, Mr Gallagher changed his original account of the shooting of Michael Bridge who was wounded on Bloody Sunday. He said he did not drag Mr Bridge to shelter as he said in his submission.

Another witness to the inquiry, Delores MacFarland, broke down in tears as she recalled seeing soldiers firing a rubber bullet at point blank range at people taking cover in a stairwell of Rossville flats.

‘‘The other soldier had an ordinary rifle and was hitting the people in the stairwell entrance with the butt of his rifle,’’ she said in her direct evidence.