Police used doors and curtains to carry bodies, Omagh trial hears

Police officers used doors and curtains from nearby shops to carry away seriously injured people from the scene of the Omagh bombing, the Special Criminal Court in Dublin heard today.

Detective Sergeant Philip Marshall, a former RUC officer who witnessed the explosion on August 15, 1998, was giving evidence in the trial of Colm Murphy.

Mr Murphy, a 57-year-old native of Co Armagh, with an address at Jordan's Corner, Ravensdale, Co Louth, is accused of conspiring with another person to cause an explosion likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property in the State or elsewhere between August 13 and 16, 1998.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Detective Sergeant Marshall told Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting, that he was stationed at the Omagh RUC station, when at around 2.30pm on the afternoon of the car bombing he was told by his communications officer of a bomb warning involving the town’s courthouse.

He said that on foot of this warning, he went to help officers clear a series of streets which formed a triangle around the courthouse

Sergeant Marshall told the special three-judge, non-jury court that he was at the top of Omagh’s High Street when the bomb exploded.

He described hearing a “very loud bang” and seeing “a plume of smoke and dust” and “a halo of shattering glass”.

A vehicle, parked outside a clothes shop was observed to be on fire.

The court, with Mr Justice Paul Butler presiding, heard there was “pandemonium” after the explosion, “alarms were going off everywhere”, and hundreds of people were “screaming for help”.

Sergeant Marshall said officers “did their best” for the seriously injured and carried them to the nearest road junction on doors, and in curtains taken from shop premises nearby.

The court was told that 21 people were pronounced dead at the scene, and that bodies were placed in a nearby alleyway to “give them some sense of dignity”.

Sergeant Marshall also told the court that he assigned each police officer the care of one body, but that as the death toll mounted, some officers were required to take charge of as many as three bodies.

The prosecution is claiming that Mr Murphy loaned two mobile phones to a man who was involved in transporting the car bomb from Dundalk to Omagh, where it exploded killing a total of 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injuring more than 300.

The trial continues tomorrow.