Ex-policeman tells of Bloody Sunday shooting

A retired Scottish police superintendent who witnessed Bloody Sunday from the walls of Derry today described hearing two long bursts of automatic gunfire before troops opened up with rifles.

Samuel McGonigle said rioters throwing stones in the Bogside district beneath him were unperturbed by the sub-machine-gun shooting and treated it as ‘‘friendly fire’’.

He also said he heard what could have been nail bombs going off in the area ahead of the Army shootings on January 30 1972.

Mr McGonigle, from Prestwick, was watching events from an Army observation post during a fact-finding trip to Northern Ireland.

Thirteen Catholic men were shot dead in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday when members of 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment moved in following a big civil rights demonstration.

Campaigners have always maintained that the Army shooting was unprovoked, but the troops claim they came under attack from IRA gunfire and nail bombs.

Mr McGonigle, who at the time was stationed at Paisley as planning officer for the Renfrew and Bute Constabulary, described demonstrators throwing stones, bricks and rubble, but confirmed that he did not see anyone carrying guns, nail bombs or petrol bombs.

However after hearing the blasts of rubber bullets and CS gas canisters being fired, he heard a series of different explosions, identified by a soldier beside him as nail bombs.

He added: ‘‘I then heard two long bursts of automatic fire. This firing appeared to come from the vicinity of the Rossville Flats.’’

It seemed to have been fired in a northerly direction, from which the Paras entered the Bogside, he said, adding: ‘‘I noticed that the demonstrators who were south of the flats and still throwing missiles did not scatter or run away and seemed unconcerned; they treated the fire as friendly fire.

‘‘I assumed therefore that the firing was from the area of the Rossville Flats and was directed north away from the demonstrators. I recall one of the Army personnel describing the firing as a Thompson sub-machine gun.’’

He described a soldier at the post trying to identify the point from which the Army was being machine gunned before hearing a single shot, sharper than the dull automatic fire he had just heard, which was apparently fired from the north, beyond his field of vision.

‘‘I got the impression at the time that this was a warning shot from the Army.

‘‘After this shot was heard the entire crowd who were standing to the south of the Rossville Flats scattered and took cover behind buildings and rubble.’’

But in the surrounding area, the civil rights rally at Free Derry Corner continued and a crowd re-grouped at the rubble barricade across Rossville Street to start throwing stones again, Mr McGonigle said.

‘‘I then heard a number of loud rifle cracks,’’ he said.

‘‘At this point the crowd who had been around the lorry quickly threw themselves down and then when the firing had finished got up and ran off in different directions.

‘‘The crowd around the rubble barricade on Rossville Street also scattered quickly as soon as the firing began. I would say that the firing lasted only two or three minutes before it stopped.

‘‘I then saw three people lying on the ground to the south of the rubble barricade who appeared to be injured. I recall that one of these people after a short time got up and limped away.

‘‘The other two people were lying motionless on the ground. There were also another two injured people lying near a phone box behind block 1 of the Rossville Flats ... one of them lying in a pool of blood.’’

Mr McGonigle said he then saw troops appear for the first time, driving up to the barricade and putting the two casualties into the back of a lorry.

He said: ‘‘At this stage I did not know that anyone had been killed and it was not until I got back to Belfast that I heard there had been casualties.

‘‘The mood of police personnel at that time was that we had witnessed quite an experience.’’