Gerard Donaghy

On 30 January 1972, 27 civil rights protesters were shot by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in the Bogside area of the city. Fourteen people, six of whom were minors, died in the incident. Donaghy was shot in the stomach while running to safety between Glenfada Park and Abbey Park. A further individual named Gerard McKinney (aged 35) was fatally shot as he attempted to assist Donaghy.

In 1969, at the age of 15, he and his siblings moved to Meenan Square, where he lived until his death. In 1970, Donaghy obtained a job in the Waterside with Carlin's Brewery as a delivery hand on a beer lorry. He lost this employment shortly before his seventeenth birthday in 1971 when he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for throwing stones at policemen. Donaghy was imprisoned in June 1971; he was released on 24 December and returned to live with his sister in Meenan Square.

Both of Donaghy's parents had died by 1966, when he was 12 years old, and he was raised by his elder siblings, Mary and Patrick. According to Donaghy's older sister, Mary Doherty, Donaghy was a bright scholar but "one of those children who was very bright but who just never used his brains."

Gerard V. Donaghy (20 February 1954 – 30 January 1972), sometimes transcribed as Gerald Donaghey, was a native of the Bogside, Derry who was killed by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday in Derry, Northern Ireland.