Paddy Friel, shot in the head with a plastic bullet two decades after his uncle Thomas was killed, says there can be no hierarchy of victims.

He was on a night out with friends at the height of the disturbances arising from the Drumcree stand off and was caught up in the crossfire. To this day he has a hole in his skull and still suffers debilitating brain injuries as a result.

Tragically, Paddy is not the only member of his family to have shot by the security forces.

The aforementioned incident occurred 23 years after his uncle Thomas was killed by a British soldier with a rubber bullet in Creggan. Thomas was also 21. He was returning from a night out when it happened.

Creggan father-of-one Paddy, now 45, spoke to the ‘Journal’ this week about that July 12 night in 1996 when his life was changed forever and said that he was lucky to have survived.

“Myself and a friend went up to a party in Bishop Street into one of the bars. We came out afterwards at about one o’clock in the morning and the police and the soldiers were standing at the edge of George’s Bar.

“We crossed the road and they opened up on us and hit me on the head with a plastic bullet. I hit the ground. We went down the banking at the back of the Folly to the Bogside Inn and the boys put me in a car and took me to the hospital. A week later I took worse. I had a fractured skull and a bleed to the brain.

“I had paralysis and I couldn’t speak so they transferred me then to Belfast for three weeks where I had to learn how to speak and use the power of my arms and my legs again. I went to speech therapy for about six months to learn how to speak right.”

Paddy was lucky in one sense but he still suffers debilitating after-effects from the brain injury perpetrated on him that night.

“I still suffer from paralysis today. There are times I can’t feel the side of my face and I can’t move my arm.

“I was in hospital recently. I thought I was taking a stroke it was that bad. The doctor told me to phone an ambulance and I went over. The nurse turned and said it’s a bad episode related to what happened. When the cold weather comes in it hits me and I can’t move my head off the pillow. It cripples me during the winter. But it was a bad turn I took at the start of this month. I ended up in hospital and thought I was dying.”

Though now able to cope despite his injuries, the shooting closed off a number of avenues at the time that might otherwise have appealed to a young man in his twenties.

“I wasn’t allowed to play football after it - I wasn’t a good footballer anyway! - because I wasn’t allowed to head the ball. I wouldn’t have been allowed to box or anything. I didn’t really do it but it stopped that as an option.

“If I see flashing lights it leaves me off balance and leaves my head pounding so I can’t really take my son to see fireworks.

“The last time I took him I thought I was going to pass out when they were setting them off.

“It changed my life. I’m still dealing with it 24 years later nearly every day. It’s the consequence of the injury sustained that night. You can still feel the hole in my head. It wasn’t an ordinary fracture. It was compound fracture. There is a hole left there.”

Paddy is infuriated when he sees MPs from military constituencies in Britain stand up in the House of Commons and talk about ‘vexatious’ claims and suggest members of the security forces should be treated differently from other people.

“Plastic bullets should be done away with. They are supposed to be fired from the waist down, not from the waist up. That night when they were firing those plastic bullets they were trying to kill people. When I was hit I was yards from the police that fired it, right on the side of the head.

“The soldier that shot Thomas stood out in front of him and fired it at point blank range at his forehead and hit him. He died a couple of days later in hospital.”

As someone still suffering because a policeman shot him in the head with a plastic bullet after a night out Paddy will certainly be applying to the victim payments scheme. But he goes further and insists people who may have become involved in the armed struggle or who served time in jail as a result of the conflict should also be eligible.

“British soldiers were here and killed people and maimed people but they believe they are at the top of a hierarchy of victims. They are not. Everybody who was involved in the conflict was a victim even if they went to jail for more than two years. Many were abused inside. They were battered and tormented.

“I know a lot of ex-prisoners who suffer depression and PTSD. They would tell you what they go through. I think they should be entitled to the payments. It wasn’t just one army in Ireland that was fighting. Ex-republican and ex-loyalist prisoners should all be entitled to the scheme, the way a British soldier or an ex-RUC man is entitled to it. They should be all classed as equals and there should be no hierarchy for Crown Forces.”

Paddy has come to terms with the events of the night of July 12/13 1996 but his family are still seeking justice for what happened to Thomas on May 18, 1973, when he too was 21 and coming home from a night out.

“The British soldiers that shot my uncle Thomas should take full responsibilty for it but he has never got justice for what happened to him. They should stand up and take full responsibility. It’s still going on and on and on. Now my father is dead and my auntie, who was running the campaign, is dead. The next generation is running it,” he said.

Their campaign for justice and answers will continue.