He had turned 15 the previous November and had just left school. He was a year and four months older than me. There was ten of us, we were all very close.

That Friday, May 19, 1972, Manus returned home with his first wage packet. I remember me ma being delighted when he handed her the housekeeping as jobs in Derry were hard to come by but he had some kind of a chance now with this job. He then went to the shop and bought us younger ones sweets. Then he got his tea. After his tea he fell asleep for about an hour or so and then watched TV for a while. At around 9.15pm he got up and took the dog out. He said he was going to the fishy. He always went to the Scooby Doo chip shop in Meenan Park.

Around the same time I went with me sister Julie to her friend's house in the Waterside to baby-sit while they went out. At around 11pm a neighbour of ours Donal Moran arrived at the house. He had Julie in the car. He told me Manus had been injured and we had to go straight home.
When we reached Westland Street there were crowds of people everywhere. There was a whole panic going on and cars going into the area were being stopped. Somebody started questioning Donal as to who we were and where we were going and I remember somebody shouting that's the Deerys let them through. There was people staring in at us and I was feeling extremely uncomfortable. I hated them staring, I was afraid of what it was all telling me. There were woman banging bin lids and when we got around as far as the house neighbours and friends, everybody was around the door, and everybody was crying. I knew he was dead.

Sedated
I don't remember going into the house but I remember seeing my mother lying in bed. There was a doctor there, she had been sedated. I wanted somebody to say he was dead but nobody said it. I remember running up the stairs to check if the wains were in. Pat, Vinney and the twins Betty and Marie were all in the one bed and they were crying. Vinney said 'Our Moka's dead'. That's what we all called our Manus.

I literally ran out of the house. I remember Rita Nicholl trying to stop me and me pushing her out of the way. I ran down to me aunt Maggie's. She lived in Meenan Park. I knew when I got into me aunt Maggie's, I don't know how I knew thinking back on it but I knew he'd been shot in 'the tunnel' in Meenan Park. 'The tunnel' was a space below a walkway connecting flats above the shops and flats above the Bog Inn. We all used the tunnel for courtin'.

There was a deathly silence in the house. Everybody was there except me cousin Willy, who was at Borderland. It was around midnight and we all just sat there in silence waiting on the Borderland bus to come in to make sure Willy was safe. I remember him coming in as clear as day. He was screaming to his ma, 'Moka Deery's dead' 'Moka Deery's dead'. She shuffled us all up to bed. I often slept in their house.

Felt empty
At about 4 in the morning I got up and sneaked out of the house. I wanted to go to where he was shot, I don't know why, maybe to be somehow near to him. I didn't know where his body was. I don't remember anyone saying. I went round to the tunnel thinking there'd be blood or something, anything belonging to him but there was nothing. The place was all scrubbed. I felt empty. I sat there for along time and after that it all goes misty.

I only remember bits of the wake. Our house full of people I didn't know, me smoking a fag for the first time, me father sitting away at the back of the room crying while people were saying the rosary. It was the first time I ever seen him or any other man crying but it wouldn't be the last. He was a while quiet and gentle man but after that his heart was broken.

I remember being sent to get a dress and a pair of shoes. At 13 I didn't know I was supposed to get black so I came back with a patchwork dress and a pair of suede patchwork shoes. Me mother laughed at me and I was kind of embarrassed but I remember loving that dress and them shoes. And me ma had the wit to let me wear them.

I went to the Mass but started to cry in the chapel and left as I didn't want people seeing me crying. So I didn't go to the funeral.
When Manus left our house that night he went down to me aunt Maggie's to swap comics with Tommy our cousin. But that night Tommy didn't have a swap so then Tommy decided to go up to Jimbo Stewart's to see if he had a swap. Manus then went on to the fishy. He got a bag of chips and met up with friends Miles O'Hagan, Ned Divan, Tooty Muldoon, Noel Millar and Margaret McCool in the tunnel.

Shot rang out
From Noel Millar's statement of what happened next, they were all standing around having the craic in the tunnel around 9.30. A street drinker had come along with a 'Longkesh hanky' he was looking a pound for. He got no takers and just as he was folding the hanky to put it away a shot rang out. Noel felt something hit his face.

Like the soldier in the story who didn't fire, the soldier who fired at Manus was positioned in the same Sanger on the Derry walls with a clear view of the tunnel. His bullet hit the wall behind Manus and the ricochet struck Manus in the back of the head. For all the good it does, I have a letter dated 2002 and signed by Des Brown, The Parliamentary Undersecretary Of State For Northern Ireland, saying that the soldier who fired was acting outside the yellow card guidelines.

As a family we've exhausted the processes of trying to hold that soldier to account and the processes have for the moment at any rate exhausted us.

It was two weeks after the 37th anniversary of Manus's death that I read the soldier's account of the incident in which he didn't shoot and all these memories came flooding back. It shook me to the core to read about him calmly making the choice not to shoot a girl he thought was armed. He had two young daughters so he saw beyond the 'justice' of 'my country right or wrong' and did the right thing.

The soldier who murdered my brother made the perverse choice to shoot a young boy who was clearly unarmed knowing the same concept of 'justice' would allow him to get away with it. And up until now he has."