‘I lifted the towel. It was Lorna, she had been shot in the chest’ – the moment husband found his wife
THE heartbroken husband of a woman gunned down in Tunisia in a terrorist attack has told how he found her body on the beach.
Meath father Declan Carty gave a harrowing account of the day gunman Seifeddine Rezgui struck in the holiday resort of Sousse killing 38 people. His wife Lorna Carty (54) was killed in the rampage on June 26, 2015.
The couple were staying at the Imperial Marhaba Hotel when the attack took place.
They had been moved from another hotel after they had complained about the noise of construction work.
Mr Carty told the inquest he had recently suffered a heart attack and the couple had gone on holiday to try to relax.
On the day of the attack, trained nurse Ms Carty had brought a towel down to the seats on the beach, and collected orange juice and croissants from the restaurant. At around 10am, she went back out to go to the beach.
“We had our bags packed from the previous evening, because we were due to go home Friday evening,” Mr Carty told Dublin Coroner’s Court. Mr Carty said he stayed in their hotel room to have a nap.
“I woke up to the sound of what I thought was fireworks or bangers,” he said.
“I tried to ring Lorna a few times but there was no reply.”
Looking out the window, he could see people running towards the hotel. Mr Carty said he left the room, but a staff member waved him and others back. Around seven or eight people went into his room, and eventually they heard the gunfire moving away.
After around 20 minutes, they were able to leave the room. “I went through the reception area looking for Lorna. I waited in the lobby around 20 minutes. There was still no sign of Lorna.”
He decided to go to the beach where Ms Carty said she would be. “On the way to the beach I saw bodies,” he said.
Mr Carty said he saw three bodies covered with towels.
“The blood was running out of them,” he recalled.
“I walked in the direction where I was expecting Lorna to be,” he said, explaining he saw her towel, a blue stripy one. “I lifted the towel. It was Lorna, she had been shot in the chest.
“She was lying with her head to one side, like she was lying in the sun. It appears that she was oblivious to what was going on.
“After I pulled myself together, I went to the restaurant and flopped in a chair,” he said.
A man he didn’t know put his arms around him and stayed with him for 10 minutes before going back to his family. “He was a life-saver,” Mr Carty said.
He then rang family members, and his son Simon flew out that night. His wife’s body had been moved to a hospital in Tunis.
He told the coroner, Myra Cullinane, that: “I thought we were all going to die on the day.”
The farmer explained that the sound of the commotion coming from the beach was what first alerted him to something being seriously wrong.
“Lorna was the kind of person that she would be worried about me after having a heart attack. She was a nurse. I knew well that if she was able to move at all she would be somewhere looking for me,” he said.