Stark discrepancies between the trajectories of shots which paratroopers admitted firing on Bloody Sunday and the known locations of victims were highlighted at the inquiry yesterday.
Mr Arthur Harvey QC, for a number of next-of-kin, said the accounts given afterwards by the soldiers of the shots they had fired failed to account for a number of the injuries and deaths.
When one tried to marry the trajectories described by the soldiers with the known injuries to people, there was no accounting for the shooting of Mrs Margaret Deery, counsel said.
Mrs Deery, a widow with 14 children, received a severe gunshot injury to her thigh. But, counsel said, "it is as if Margaret Deery was quite simply airbrushed from history. No soldier sees her; no soldier hears her screams; no soldier sees her being carried away." There was also no trajectory from any soldier that accounted for the shooting of Mr Michael Bridge, who was wounded on the waste ground behind Rossville Flats.
A teenage girl, Alana Burke, was knocked down by an army vehicle on the waste ground and had a serious hip injury. Counsel said it would appear she had been knocked down by Sgt O's vehicle, but, on the soldiers' statements, there was no accounting for what happened to her.
In this sector, Sector 2, there was one death and five injuries, "and really not one of those can be accounted for by the description that has been offered by the army", counsel said.
In Sector 3, which concerns the shooting of people in the vicinity of the rubble barricade on Rossville Street, Mr Harvey drew attention to the killing of 17-yearold Michael Kelly.
Counsel said it could be established that he was shot by Soldier F. But until February 18th or 19th (three weeks after Bloody Sunday) there was no explanation for the shooting of Mr Kelly.
On the evening of Bloody Sunday, January 30th, 1972, Soldier F had made a statement and did not advert at all to firing at the barricade, counsel said. He had mentioned in his statement that two blast bombs were thrown from that direction, but he did not indicate that he returned fire.
By February 18th, there was a trajectory map in existence showing F had fired a shot across the barricade somewhere in proximity to where it was believed Mr Kelly was shot.
Counsel continued: "On the 19th, a statement was prepared by Col Overbury [an army legal officer] and it would also appear that on the 19th a statement was taken by the Treasury Solicitor, and for the first time Soldier F indicated that he had fired."
Counsel asserted that the statements given by the soldiers when they were first challenged as to what occurred amounted to a wholly different account from that which had now been placed before the inquiry.