Gunshot victim and the good samaritan in
Driving to a job and talking to his pregnant wife Nicole on speakerphone, Lance Bradford noticed strange scenes on Deans Ave.
‘‘There’s people on the ground, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back,’’ he said.
It was about 20 minutes before Nicole’s phone rang again. In that time, Bradford had backed his dark red Holden ute into the scene of New Zealand’s worst mass shooting, loaded up a badly injured father and daughter, and a limping man steeped in blood, and driven them to hospital.
Yesterday, that same ute was parked outside the home of 51-year-old Feroze Mohammed Ditta, who had been that limping man. He had been shot twice in the calf at the Masjid Al Noor after being trapped under 20 bodies in the crush to escape out of the mosque’s emergency exit. Ditta dragged himself to the gate, where that ute reversing up the street was a blessed sight.
‘‘I still remember the red ute backing up, you throwing your tools out of the back seat,’’ Ditta said. ‘‘I don’t know where you threw them. And making room for us, all bloody.’’
‘‘I’m just glad you’re all right, mate,’’ Bradford said, taking Ditta’s hand on the couch. He’d already visited him in hospital, in the beginning of what the pair say will be a lifelong friendship.
Bradford, a 32-year-old skylight salesman, was driving from a friend’s house to a job when he noticed a woman on the ground on Deans Ave. He assumed she’d fallen. But then there were others – five, six, seven, as many as 10.
‘‘It clicked in my head, s..., something is happening here. So I pulled over where Deans Ave goes from two lanes into one. I pulled over on the left-hand side there. Then I went back down through the path through the trees. I could hear the gunshots going off so I was thinking I need to be a little bit careful, because my wife is pregnant.’’