Teenager was ‘ready to f lourish’
A teenager missing for days until being confirmed as a victim of the Christchurch mosque shootings was a popular student who was ‘‘ready to flourish’’.
Muhammad Haziq MohdTarmizi, 17, a Malaysian national, was confirmed dead by police yesterday.
Haziq was at the Masjid Al Noor on Deans Ave with his mother, father and younger brother when a gunman opened fire last Friday.
His father, Mohammed Tarmizi Shuib, was shot twice and was in a stable condition in Christchurch Hospital undergone surgery.
His mother, Marina Binti Zahari, and his younger brother were not physically hurt.
Haziq’s family moved to New Zealand about 18 months ago. He was in year 12 at Burnside High School and had gained several excellences in NCEA level 1 last year.
‘‘[He was] a great young man who had the respect of his mates and teachers,’’ said Burnside High principal Phil Holstein. ‘‘Conscientious, self-motivated and just wanted to do well. Teachers have noted that he has grown in confidence in the short time he having has been here. He was ready, as one teacher said, to flourish.’’
Holstein said staff and some senior pupils would attend Haziq’s funeral.
‘‘Our thoughts and prayers are very much with the family and friends.’’
Haziq was one of the last mosque shooting victims to be identified. As late as Tuesday night, his family did not know his fate and he was listed as unaccounted for.
‘‘We must hope for the best but be prepared for the worst . . . all of us will be praying,’’ Penang politician Boon Poh Phee said at the time.
‘‘I can’t imagine what the family went through in those days,’’ Holstein said yesterday.
Burnside held several assemblies yesterday to inform students of Haziq’s death.
Holstein recited the peace prayer of St Francis of Assisi, which concludes:
Let me not seek as much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love, for it is in giving that one receives, it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in pardoning pardoned. that one is