Good Samaritans of March 15
As people streamed from the Al Noor mosque in fear and confusion, Jacob Murray remembers three faces. They haunt him still, writes Dominic Harris.
Sitting on a bench in Hagley Park near the Al Noor mosque, Jacob Murray flinches as he hears children scream happily in the distance.
His words falter and he looks around warily. ‘‘Even happy screaming makes my brain twitch,’’ he says after assuring himself nothing is amiss. ‘‘It just makes me get on edge.’’
Murray has good reason to be jumpy – a year ago he was one of the first on the scene of the Christchurch terror attack.
What he did and saw has stayed with him; last week he walked past the mosque for the first time on his own, alone with his reflections.
‘‘It brought up a feeling of intense sadness. It also made me think, ‘Has society really changed, that this isn’t going to happen again?’ ’’
On March 15, Murray, a Christian youth leader then working as a builder, was driving along Deans Ave when he met with a scene of confusion and chaos.
Amid the people streaming from the mosque, the injuries, the screaming, he remembers three faces.
The first was of a woman in bright yellow and green traditional Muslim dress, lying on the ground. He ran to her, held her bloodstained stomach and called the police.
Then there was the man who grabbed his shoulder as he was helping her. ‘‘I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got to stay calm’,’’ Murray, 26, says.
After getting them into a car for a bystander to rush them to hospital, Murray helped a third person, a man who was being half-carried, half-dragged by another. ‘‘I was wearing my fluoro builder’s uniform, I put my arm around him.’’
The rest is a haze – of yelling to the ambulances to come closer, of helping another woman move her car.
‘‘One thing that sticks out is how terrified the police were, how terrified the people were trying to get out in their cars. We didn’t know if there was another gunman or if the violence was going to continue.
‘‘There was so much unknown, and I guess that’s the feeling of anxiety and fear and terror that haunts me to this day – the terror in them that was reflected in me.’’
The first month after the attack was horrible – ‘‘nightmares, freak-outs, anxiety all the time’’.
Counselling and support from family and friends helped, then at six months it returned.
‘‘I started getting fear when I was in crowds that I had to rationalise my way through. It stopped me going out with friends every now and again because I felt crap and anxious.’’
While the flashbacks, nightmares and anxiety have largely stopped, certain sounds and loud noises are still triggers, a hyper-awareness of any danger.
But there have been positives. He has returned to being a social worker, looking after youngsters at an Aranui school.
Looking back, there are the lingering questions – what happened to the three people he helped, could he have stopped the gunman?
‘‘That replayed in my head hundreds of times, and I just had to move on and say I did the best at the time.’’
What happened has opened Murray’s eyes to the dangers of racism, xenophobia and prejudice. He hopes people realise their actions will make a difference in crushing that and supporting the Muslim community.
‘‘If I had to say something to them I’d say: I hope you’re safe, I hope you feel safe. Because feeling unsafe is toxic, it’s terrifying.’’
From ‘sorry’ to ‘goodbye’
When Len Peneha moved out of his home in August, he said goodbye.
Not only to the walls and treasured old memories, but also to a young woman who had lain across his drive, dead after being gunned down in the March 15 terror attack.
Driving past her each day, over her ghost, and pausing each time to say how sorry he was had become too much, an abhorrence.
‘‘I would apologise every time, the same thing,’’ he said. ‘‘I would just say, ‘Sorry Ansi’. I just couldn’t stand it any more.’’
That young woman was Ansi Alibava, who at 25 was younger than Peneha’s son, Isaac. After initially escaping from the Al Noor mosque, she was shot as she returned to look for her husband, something Peneha witnessed.
Moving just around the corner, still in Riccarton, has been a mental salve for the 54-year-old IT worker.
‘‘Now I don’t have those images or thoughts any more of seeing her. I still think about her quite often but it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.’’
Peneha was at home that day with Isaac and his daughter Jasmine, then 19, and saw the horror unfold from both his driveway – where the gunman pointed a weapon at him – and an upstairs bedroom. The mosque is just metres away and separated by the drive and a twometre wall.
As bullets flew, people clambered out of the mosque’s windows as they fled. Some scaled the wall and he rushed to help, pulling them over and ushering them to safety in his home. Among them, he believes, was Alibava’s husband.
Even now Peneha can vividly see the fear on their faces.
He cannot recall how many there were, but one stands out. Not a face but a hand, the ageworn right hand of an older man, one that gripped the top of the wall.
Peneha thinks he had been shot. ‘‘I tried to grab his hand and reach over to get his forearm, but I just couldn’t get enough leverage. He was
‘‘One thing that sticks out is how terrified the police were, how terrified the people were ... We didn’t know if there was another gunman or if the violence was going to continue.’’
Jacob Murray
struggling to get himself up. I remember him calling out for help.’’
Unable to lift him, all he could do was tell him to stay where he was, hidden behind a shed on the mosque side. He has never known his fate.
A year on, Peneha is still working through what he witnessed.
Panic attacks so bad that they left him hiding in bushes from cars at night have subsided with the help of counselling, but there are still dark times, forcing the odd day off work.
Thoughts of the day still occasionally overwhelm him, and even reading about difficult topics can set him off.
Buried memories also bubble up, causing fresh upset, and he hasn’t walked past the mosque since he moved away. ‘‘I still relive it every day, without fail.’’
Then there is anger at the gunman’s choice of target – the mosque, Peneha’s family, his city, his country.
But he has begun to make peace with it, or at least his own role. He is glad he was there to protect his children, that he could help others.
‘‘At first I thought about why we were there in the first place, but now I’ve accepted the fact that we were there and perhaps that we were meant to be there to help.’’
There are regrets – regrets that he didn’t go into the mosque afterwards to help more victims, sorrow that he couldn’t help the old man at the wall.
‘‘It bothers me still to this day,’’ he said.
‘‘Initially I thought ‘I could have done more, I should have done more’, but the more I reflect on it the more I realise the way it played out was the way it was going to happen.
‘‘I couldn’t have done any more than what I did.’’
Then there is the comfort of strangers who have become friends.
Mohamed Reda Adwy was among those he sheltered, Peneha stopping him going back out while the gunman was still loose.
Adwy was so grateful he gave Peneha a pounamu pendant and his own prayer mat, which he now counts among his most prized possessions.
On Sunday, Peneha will be at the Hagley Park memorial service and hopes to go to the mosque to pay his respects. ‘‘Hopefully I will see Mohamed and someone else I helped over the fence.’’
His thoughts will doubtless be with Alibava, and the old man. ‘‘I’m hoping he survived, because I want to tell him how sorry I am I left him there.’’
There will be messages of hope and togetherness, and Peneha has his own.
‘‘I just hope that the prejudices amongst even the religions learn a lesson from what has happened, in that violence against a peaceful people is a violence against everyone.
‘‘That violence would never win.’’