Local woman captured in iconic Bloody Sunday footage dies

A STRABANE woman who found herself at the heart of the most iconic image of the Bloody Sunday massacre has died.

May O’Neill was behind Bishop Edward Daly, then Fr Daly, when he used his white bloodstained handkerchief to lead a group of people carrying Jackie Duddy away from Rossville Flats.

Then aged 31, May is clearly visible in the famous video footage of a stooping Fr Daly as he waved his handkerchief at paratroopers.

As the clip unfolds, she is seen running up to the group carrying Jackie Duddy. The mother of five, who lived at Hollyhill in Strabane, passed away on Friday. She was 82.

Speaking in 2016 following the death of Bishop Daly, Ms O’Neill recalled the grim scene on the streets of Derry in January 1972.

She said that as the priest led the band of five men, an ambulance stopped to take 17-year-old Jackie’s lifeless body to hospital. She offered to go with him but on advice from Fr Daly, who warned her she faced being arrested, she stayed where she was.

CIVIL RIGHTS

Revealing how she was thrust into the centre of arguably the most enduring image of the conflict, the pensioner said, “I went to all the civil rights marches. We all did. I went to Belfast, Dungannon, Enniskillen, everywhere there was a march I was at it.

“I was there on Bloody Sunday like everyone else because we all thought it would be a peaceful march. But then the soldiers started firing into the whole crowd and didn’t care who they killed. Anyone could have been shot that day.

“There was panic everywhere and I went to see if I could help. I saw Jackie Duddy being carried and a priest in front of it all. The soldiers were shooting away all the time and I said I would go in the ambulance with the young fella. But Fr Daly told me not to because I would be arrested.

“I was afraid but what could you do? You just had to keep going.”

The footage of Fr Daly signalling with his handkerchief has been beamed around the world thousands of times in the years since Bloody Sunday.

May O’Neill said such was the indiscriminate nature of the gunfire, the priest himself could have been killed. “He risked his life that day. I remember them carrying Jackie Duddy and the bullets were still bouncing about all over the place. I would say that but for him waving that hankie, they would have shot him too.”

May O’Neill’s funeral took place in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Strabane, on Monday (December 19).