He stared into my eyes as he raised his bow and arrow. I thought: This is it, I’m going to die
Scots-born survivor of Norway horror tells of facing killer...
IT is a moment she replays in her head over and over again.
After putting her five-year-old daughter in her car, Joanne McGregor suddenly came face to face with the mass murderer who killed five people on the streets of a quiet Norwegian town.
For a split second she looked into the eyes of deranged Espen Andersen Braathen in the midst of his horrific bow-and-arrow rampage through Kongsberg earlier this month.
Only feet away, he raised his weapon and pointed it directly at her.
If she had frozen to the spot, she would probably be dead.
The fact the Scots mother of two is still alive to tell the tale is a blessing she is trying to come to terms with.
Ms McGregor, originally from Pilrig, Edinburgh, said: ‘It was like something in a movie: this crazy face, totally disturbed and detached. He looked like he just wanted to hurt and kill.
‘Survival took over. I didn’t want to die. I threw myself down behind the front of the car. I guessed he would come after
‘It was this crazy face, totally disturbed and detached’
me, so I looked up to see which way round the car he was coming. But he wasn’t there, I don’t know why.’
Later that night, after word filtered through that the maniac had been caught, Ms McGregor, who moved to Norway as a child with her Scottish mother and Norwegian father, who had met when he was a student at Heriot-Watt University, drove through her home town and realised the scale of the event in which she had been caught up.
She said: ‘It was chaos: helicopters, ambulances, police in all their gear everywhere. Kongsberg is so quiet, even boring. Things like this don’t happen here.
‘But you cannot allow yourself to be consumed by hatred and bitterness. I have to use this to make my life better.’
The evening of October 13 had been unremarkable for the train conductor and her partner, Rigoberto Villarroel, a police officer.
The couple had visited his mother in the old quarter of Kongsberg, a town an hour from Oslo best known for its winter sports and tech industry.
As they left his mother’s flat at
6pm, Mr Villarroel was alerted to a woman who needed medical help at the front of a supermarket. Unaware of what was unfolding around the corner, Ms McGregor waited with their daughter in their car. However, when Mr Villarroel did not return she went to check and saw the flashing lights of the first police vehicles on the scene.
Next she spotted a woman, holding her injured arm and seemingly in shock. Ms McGregor said: ‘I got her to come with me to the car. I thought we’d be safe enough back round the corner.
‘I was phoning for an ambulance when an emergency exit from the shop burst open and he barged out. He was just standing there with a bow and arrow. It was surreal. He saw us, raised his bow and pointed an arrow at me from four metres away. The injured woman ran away and I dived behind the car.’
She added: ‘Across the street was a home for the disabled where I used to work, and a former colleague came out to help me. I got our daughter from the car and ran in. Just as we were doing that, the man came back, jogging past, and that’s the last I saw of him.
‘Rigo called me and said he’d been shot but was OK. It was only later in the hospital when I saw him I realised he still had an arrow stuck in his shoulder.’
Mr Villarroel has been hailed a hero after going into the shop to confront the killer, only to be shot from behind.
He evacuated the store and told passers-by to take cover. He had surgery to remove the arrow and the woman who Ms McGregor helped also survived the tragedy.
She was one of 24 people targeted by Braathen taking potshots at residents before stabbing to death four women and a man aged between 52 and 78.
The 37-year-old was eventually cornered by officers. Now charged with the murders, he is at present undergoing psychiatric tests.
Braathen reportedly converted to Islam in 2016, but early suspicions his spree may have been terrorrelated are being played down.
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