THE Headmaster of Dunblane primary school, Mr Ron Taylor, last night made a public plea for tougher gun controls after telling the Cullen inquiry of the "unimaginable carnage" he saw in his school gym on March 13th.
"I cannot for the life of me understand why anybody would wish to keep handguns at home," he told a news conference in Stirling. He said guns could be kept elsewhere if people wanted to continue sporting activities. "I can only imagine that such people have never seen the result of what guns can do."
Earlier yesterday he told the inquiry how he rushed into the gym after being alerted a gunman was in the school. "It was a scene of unimaginable carnage one's worst nightmare," he said. More details emerged yesterday of the background of the gunman, Thomas Hamilton and of the harrowing wait parents endured at the school for news of their children.
Hamilton had debts of more than £11,000, was being pursued for non payment of council tax and faced the threat of having his possessions seized.
The inquiry heard too of his strange upbringing growing up as a child believing his mother was his sister.
His mother Ms Agnes Watt (64), of Raploch, Stirling, said she occasionally gave him money but knew of no financial problems, and said her son phoned her every night. She knew of an interest in guns some years ago, but did not know he still had any.
A statement from James Hamilton (87) was read to the inquiry detailing Thomas Hamilton's upbringing.
Agnes married a bus driver Thomas Watt in 1950, Thomas was born two years later and the marriage broke down. The grandparents then adopted Thomas and the family lived in Glasgow and Stirling but it was only some time after 1974 that Thomas was told Agnes was his mother, and not his sister.
The inquiry heard how Hamilton nursed a grievance over what he considered unjust treatment at the hands of the Scout movement and others whom he complained had wrongly branded him a "pervert".
A letter he sent to Queen Elizabeth, patron of the Scout Association, complaining of his treatment, arrived at Buckingham Palace the weekend before the massacre.
He sent Dunblane primary school leaflets for his boys' clubs but Mr Taylor binned them. Eighteen months before the massacre he met the headmaster and gave him some more. The headmaster told the inquiry he had told parents who sought his advice that he would not send his own children to clubs like Hamilton's. Mr Taylor's account of the horror at the school on March 13 was reinforced by assistant head Agnes Awlson, who was escorting a class between classrooms at the time. She heard "sharp metallic noises" then faint screaming.
The inquiry went on to hear how parents of the dead and injured had to wait more than three hours before being told by police if their children were dead or alive.
Supt Joseph Holden, in charge of looking after the parents, told the inquiry that the police had faced problems with accurately identifying the dead and injured, and were getting no news from the hospital where the children were taken.