A witness who received "a glancing wound" from a bullet as he ran from troops on Bloody Sunday heard yesterday it may be suggested it was fired by a civilian gunman rather than a soldier.
Mr Patrick McDaid told how, while running in the car park of Rossville Flats, he bent down to dive over a low wall and did not realise that he had been hit in the back by a bullet until someone beside him pointed out he was bleeding.
Mr McDaid, who was a 24year-old plumber employed by the Londonderry Development Commission at the time, said he believed if he had not bent down just before diving for the wall, he would have been killed.
He suffered a lacerated injury to his back, and said that, from the angle of the shot, he thought it must have come from behind his right shoulder, from the north-eastern end of Block 1 of the flats.
He had been running for the gap between Blocks 2 and 3 to escape the advancing soldiers. An analysis of military firing on the day, introduced earlier this year by counsel for some soldiers, indicated they claimed to have fired at an alleged civilian gunman in that area.
Yesterday, Mr Edmund Lawson QC, for the soldiers, asked Mr McDaid if he thought it was possible he was shot by somebody near that gap. The witness replied he could not say who had shot him.
Mr Lawson pointed out that a hospital surgeon's report at the time had noted the wound contained many carbon particles and had said this "would indicate a fairly close-range discharge".
Counsel said further scientific evidence about the significance of carbon particles might lead to suggestions the bullet was likely to have been fired from very close range "and not from, as you assumed, right over the other side of the car park".
Mr Kevin Finnegan QC, for Mr McDaid, intervened to say the medical document had referred to "fairly close" range, not "very close". Mr Lawson said the results of carbon discharge tests will be put to the tribunal.
Meanwhile, a self-confessed "experienced rioter" told the inquiry he was incredulous when soldiers shot a youth who had been part of a group throwing stones at them in William Street before the paratroopers entered the Bogside.
Mr Alfie McAleer said he could not believe the British army had fired live ammunition in response to stone-throwing. "There was a code of practice for riots - no one fired live ammunition.
"Even the IRA then would not go on a riot and shoot, because they would know that some poor guy would get it by way of retaliation and it gave the soldiers an excuse to come in amongst the rioters."
Mr McAleer said he had gone on the march "because I wanted to get the bastards (the army) for the week before at Magilligan where they thumped us into the ground" - a reference to the protest march against internment which had been attacked by paratroopers.