Tourist used his own body to protect fiancee
Tales of heroism at resort that became a killing ground
Owen Richards just kept running. Around him bodies fell to the ground as the lone gunman took aim and fired at the tourists on the crowded beach.
The 16-year-old was hit in the shoulder, the bullet grazing his flesh on its way into the skull of the adult beside him.
Owen’s uncle and half-brother also died in the onslaught.
Owen’s terrifying ordeal was relayed on Saturday by the medical team who treated the teenager at a clinic in Sousse, a five-minute drive from the El Kantaoui resort, an area dominated by four and five star hotels and miles of pristine white sand.
Other astonishing tales of heroics and of fortune were also disclosed as Britain and the world came to terms with the massacre.
The El Kantaoui beach had been crowded with sunseekers. So too the Imperial Marhaba hotel’s large pool area and the other hotels around it, the Bellevue Hotel, the Royal Kenz Hotel and the Palm Marina Hotel. Just before noon on Friday that calm was shattered; all hell would break loose.
Nobody seems to have noticed Saif Al Deen Rezgui, 23, a Tunisian student, who had wandered on to the beach, wearing black Tshirt and shorts.
He was clean shaven and dressed like a Western tourist.
James, 30, from Cardiff, had been sunbathing on the beach with his fiancee Saera Wilson, 26, when they came under attack. James used his own body as a human shield to protect Wilson. The 16-year-old was hit in the shoulder, the bullet grazing his flesh on its way into the skull of the adult beside him. Owen’s uncle and half-brother also died in the onslaught. We were walking back along the beach back to our hotel when we heard what sounded like fire crackers. Then I felt something hit my head — it just felt like I had been hit.”
Rita Williams (above) |
Survivor
Confusion
In the confusion, some reports suggested he had arrived by boat; others that he had turned up on a jet ski.
Whatever the reality, Rezgui had strolled along the sand, nobody noticing the Kalashnikov assault rifle concealed inside a parasol.
Reports suggest that Rezgui first shot at a paraglider hovering above the Mediterranean.
He then turned his Kalashnikov on the sunbathers.
Owen was on the beach with close relatives when Rezgui opened fire.
He was so close to the gunfire that it had left him temporarily deafened in one ear.
The bullet that grazed his shoulder, left him with a flesh wound.
“He was shocked. He was talking about a bullet coming over his shoulder,” said Dr Fakher Benamor, a 54-year-old gynaecologist who was pressed into emergency work helping the wounded at a private clinic.
The doctor said the bullet then hit a close relative.
As Owen fled the slaughter on the beach, he saw guests dropping around him in a hail of bullets.
He told doctors that, after the initial burst of gunfire, the beachgoers stampeded in panic and began running back towards the hotel.
Benamor said: “They were running away. As he was running, he looked back and saw people being shot behind him. People were shouting ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and they were just falling.”
Mohammad Majmaji, chief nurse at the Clinique les Oliviers, said he found Owen at the scene when he was sent to collect victims by ambulance.
The teenager was distraught but still able to help another guest who was wounded.
“He was helping the injured woman who had been shot in the back. He was crying,” said Majmaji.
The clinic was also treating Matthew James for life-threatening stomach injuries.
James, 30, from Cardiff, had been sunbathing on the beach with his fiancee Saera Wilson, 26, when they came under attack.
James used his own body as a human shield to protect Wilson.
“He took a bullet for me. I owe him my life because he threw himself in front of me when the shooting started,” she said,
“He was covered in blood from the shots but he just told me to run away.
“He told me: ‘I love you babe. But just go — tell our children that their daddy loves them.”
Others on the beach had fortunate escapes. Rita Williams, 76, was one of those.
A bullet tore through her pink straw sun hat and narrowly missed her head.
“I’ve been so lucky — I’m still shaking. It was all so frightening,” Williams, of Maesteg, South Wales, said.
She and her husband Ken were on the way back to their hotel next door to the Imperial Marhaba when the shooting began.
“We were walking back along the beach back to our hotel when we heard what sounded like fire crackers. Then I felt something hit my head — it just felt like I had been hit,” she said,
“The force of it knocked me down on to the sand and I said to Ken, ‘I think I’ve been hit’.”
They followed a crowd of tourists to a neighbouring hotel and hid in the lobby for two hours.
Williams said: “It was like a war zone, we didn’t know where the shots were coming from. “It makes you appreciate life. I came so close to a terrible situation. I was shaken for a long time.”
Counting blessings
Ellie Makin, 22, a former British tennis tour player, who was on holiday with her friend Debbie Horsfall, was another counting her blessings. She was close by when Rezgui pulled his gun from under his parasol.
“All of a sudden he dropped the umbrella and had a gun, and he started shooting everyone to the right of me,” said Makin.
Christopher and Paula Emery and their family also got lucky.
They ran into the water, away from the gunman, before jumping into two speed boats that were passing by.
Some tourists had no idea what was happening.
One holidaymaker said later she thought a tsunami must have been approaching to explain the rush from the sea.
With bodies falling, Rezgui marched on.
“He was laughing and joking around, like a normal guy,” said a Tunisian witness.
“He was choosing who to shoot. Some people he was saying to them, ‘you go away’. He was choosing tourists, British, French. As the tourists fled, Rezgui went after them, entering the grounds of the Rui Imperial Marhaba Hotel, reaching first the crowded figure of eight swimming pool. By the pool was Tony Callaghan, 63, from North Walsham, Norfolk, who works for Norfolk police. He realised that the sound coming from the beach was gunfire not firecrackers. His actions probably saved a number of lives.
“I used to be in the Royal Air Force,” said Callaghan, “I know the sound of gunfire. I shouted to everyone, ‘this isn’t a fireworks display, you need to get yourself to safety now’.”