A witness has told the trial of a former soldier how he saw his own flesh \u201cbreaking away from his face\u201d when he was shot on Bloody Sunday.<\/p>\n
Michael Quinn also told Belfast Crown Court on Thursday how he saw other victims fall after being shot when soldiers opened fire in Derry.<\/p>\n
Members of the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 civilians in the city after a civil rights march in January 1972.<\/p>\n
A British Army veteran, identified only as Soldier F, has been charged with the murders of two men killed on Bloody Sunday, James Wray and William McKinney.<\/p>\n
He is also charged with five attempted murders during the incident in the city\u2019s Bogside area, including Mr Quinn, Joe Mahon, Joseph Friel, Patrick O\u2019Donnell and a person unknown. He has pleaded not guilty to the seven counts.<\/p>\n
The veteran sits behind a curtain during the non-jury trial.<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn said he was a 17-year-old schoolboy when he joined the civil rights march in 1972.<\/p>\n
He told the court how at one point he was asked by Mr Wray to carry a banner in the march.<\/p>\n
After disturbances broke out, Mr Quinn said he was taking shelter at a rubble barricade in William Street when he saw two Army Saracens enter the area.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI could see soldiers jumping out of the back of the Saracens.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them was swinging the rifle like a club \u2026 that was quite shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he then heard four shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really threw me, I couldn\u2019t understand why they were shooting because I hadn\u2019t heard anything fired at the Army.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn then said he saw another soldier emerge from the direction of the Rossville Flats.<\/p>\n
He told the court: \u201cHe had his rifle by his side, he raised it a little, from a pouch at his side he took out what I took to be a bullet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a setting sun, it was quite bright, I could see this metal object glistening in the sun. He put it into the breech of the rifle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point I thought \u2018I am getting out of here\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn said he moved towards Glenfada Park North.<\/p>\n
He said he then saw two youths there, one of whom he had what he thought looked like a nail bomb in his pocket.<\/p>\n
He said he saw a man in his mid-20s approach them and tell them \u201cput those away, you will only get killed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn said there was sustained gunfire from the Rossville Street area. He told the court he then saw a man being shot.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI heard him call out, scream. I looked at him and saw a ring of blood emerging on his leg and he was collapsing to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI heard someone shout \u2018there are people dying out here\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw a group of people carrying the body of a young man across Glenfada Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn said he tried to get out of the courtyard when he heard someone shout that soldiers were coming in.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI ran crouching across the courtyard. I remember jumping over the raised ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was approaching the exit to Abbey Park, I felt myself being struck by the bullet. It grazed my shoulder, the jacket I was wearing, and then went through my face and exited through my nose. For some reason I slowed down and I could actually see the flesh and blood breaking away from my face.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stumbled and I could see to my right someone falling forward. I thought his head was hitting the kerb. What made me think he was shot, he didn\u2019t try to save himself, his hands didn\u2019t go out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Quinn told the court he was taken to hospital where he was operated on.<\/p>\n
He said his cheekbone had been shattered by the bullet.<\/p>\n
The trial continues. – PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A witness has told the trial of a former soldier how he saw his own flesh \u201cbreaking away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,44157,13,14,6,789,11,12,15,16,5,790,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-99979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-demonstration","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-horizontal","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}