A former Derry taxi-driver yesterday described seeing carloads of weapons being taken out of the Bogside and up to the Creggan district on the night before Bloody Sunday.
Mr Frankie Boyle, who worked for City Cabs, told the inquiry that about six cars carried people and weapons from Rossville Street, Kells Walk, Lisfannon Park and the Ross ville Flats up to the Creggan.
This was at about 2 a.m. He was working a night shift. The weapons were wrapped in plastic bags and he saw them being loaded into the car boots. About 25 men and four girls were taken to the Creggan, and he knew the people involved were the IRA. He thought they must have been tipped off that the paratroopers were going to be involved with the march next day.
On Sunday afternoon at the start of the march in the Creggan he noticed a number of the same cars parked in that area. Some of the same people he had seen the night before were in them, lying back half sleeping. They were having nothing to do with the march and were clearly staying in the Creggan. Replying to Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of soldiers, the witness said he learned some time later that one of the four women he had seen was involved with the IRA. She had been arrested and it was "all over the newspapers".
At the request of Mr Alan Roxburgh, for the tribunal, the witness wrote the name of the woman on a piece of paper and handed it to inquiry staff.
Mr Boyle also described witnessing incidents involving one of the Bloody Sunday victims, 20-year-old Michael McDaid, in the Rossville Street area after the paratroopers moved in to the Bogside.
He said Mr McDaid was dressed smartly in a shirt and tie and stood out from the crowd. After he threw some stones and went towards the soldiers, he was arrested with two or three others and thrown into the back of a Saracen.
Those arrested were "kicking about" in the back of the Saracen, and a soldier fired CS gas inside. Some of the youths, including Mr McDaid, escaped from the back of the vehicle. They were choking on the gas.
The witness said that Mr McDaid ran, and when he was about 20 yards from the Saracen there was a bang and he fell to the ground.
Mrs Patricia Jarvis described witnessing various stages of the shootings as she looked from the windows of her parents' home in Rossville Flats.
She saw a Saracen drive into the car park as large numbers of people fled. Soldiers got out and she heard the whipcrack sound of real bullets.
She remembered one soldier in particular, who was firing a rifle from his hip. "The shots were fired randomly. It was as if he was saying to himself, `I'll shoot, but it doesn't matter where the bullets go'. It was like a scene from a cowboy movie."
Mr Chris Myant, who was a journalist working for the Morning Star newspaper in London, described being stopped at five roadblocks as he drove to Derry from Belfast Airport on the morning of Bloody Sunday with a number of people from the National Council for Civil Liberties.
They were eventually held at a roadblock and taken by army Land-Rover to an RUC barracks in Derry. While there, he could hear "a crescendo" of noise outside. A patrol of paratroopers arrived, who were sweating as if they had been exerting themselves. One carried a radio backpack and occasionally relayed comments he appeared to pick up from the radio traffic. This soldier said at one point: "They got the bastard with the civil rights banner."
Mr Myant said he and his group did not realise there had been deaths until they were released and made their way to the home of a Derry Civil Rights Association organiser.
The inquiry resumes on Monday.