Bomb victim 'barely recognisable', inquest told

The victim of a dissident republican bomb staggered from the scene with his face covered in blood and his clothes torn to shreds, an inquest in the North heard today.

The last words of David Caldwell, 51, before he died were that he loved his family, the hearing in Limavady was told.

The digger driver picked up a lunchbox packed with explosives which blew up in his face in a canteen at a Territorial Army base on the outskirts of Derry.

Witness Lancelot Thompson told the inquest: “I saw his face was covered in blood and barely recognisable, his clothes were in tatters, his shirt was open and there were a number of puncture wounds.”

Mr Caldwell, a divorced father of one, from Blackhill Road, Eglinton, died in hospital a short time after the Real IRA explosion on August 11, 2002.

Nobody has ever been charged with the attack, which left his partner, Mavis McFaul, devastated.