Shooting victim too afraid to sleep

Mohd Nazril Hisham Omar has barely slept since last Friday. One of the few times he did, after surgery, he woke up and screamed. To his groggy eyes, the uniformed police officer at his bedside looked a lot like the military-clad gunman who nearly killed him.

‘‘The [gunman] was in full [military] gear,’’ his wife Zurinawati Mohi said. ‘‘Just like a police officer. With the bulletproof vest and helmet.’’

‘‘He screamed for me because I was outside.’’

Nazril, 46, was about to begin praying at the Al Noor mosque on Friday afternoon when he heard what sounded like fire crackers. As bodies fell around him he saw the gunman and stood up to run, but was shot in his feet. He staggered up again but was shot in the back as he fled.

‘‘After that he was thinking that he had already died,’’ Zurinawati said.

‘‘Luckily the pile of bodies was on top of him. He could sense that the person was still walking around [shooting] everywhere. He could feel the blood . . . inside his mouth, his eyes, his nose, everywhere. Probably what let him survive was that he was at the lowest part [of the pile].’’

Nazril has since had three operations. He refuses strong medication as much as possible – any drug that might put him to sleep and trigger a repeat of the panic he felt at seeing a police officer, his wife said.

‘‘He doesn’t want to sleep at night,’’ Zurinawati said.

‘‘I don’t think he really sleeps. I think he just closes his eyes . . . Every time the nurse comes in with medication he will ask, ‘What is it for?’ ’’

Zurinawati rushed to her husband’s bedside when she heard about the attacks, having just returned home to Malaysia, where she was living for now with the couple’s oldest child. Nazril and the three younger children, all boys, live in Christchurch, where Nazril works at Foodstuffs.

The two middle boys, aged 18 and 14, attend Burnside High School, where shooting victim Muhammad Haziq MohdTarmizi also went. The two families were friendly, and Zurinawati saw Haziq and his family at a breakfast on the Sunday before the attacks.

She had spoken to Haziq’s mother this week, she said, but her main focus was her husband’s recovery. He was responding to treatment – even walking a little yesterday – but was still haunted by the memories of the shooting.

‘‘He still remembers clearly what happened,’’ she said. Air New Zealand is asking people to reconsider travel plans into Christchurch and has cancelled its own planned leadership team get-together there.

The airline is experiencing a big surge in demand for services to and from Christchurch following the mosque attacks last week. The airline wants people who can be flexible to change flights – any change fees and fare difference will be waived.

Many would-be visitors to Christchurch have already cancelled hotel bookings, but higher numbers have arrived to support the Muslim community following last week’s mosque shootings.

Rendezvous Hotel manager Faisel Sayed said business was more than 10 per cent above what was normally the busiest time of the year.

Sayed said he was at the Linwood mosque where one of the worshippers fought back, causing the gunman to flee, which probably saved his life.

‘‘It’s good to see the airlines come to the party.’’ Brent Thomas, House of Travel