Victoria Harkless
Assistant Editor-In-Chief
On Friday, March fifteenth, 2019 in Christchurch New Zealand, Brenton Tarrant (28) entered two mosques and murdered fifty-one people and injured another forty. Out of respect for the families and victims, I will not be referring to him by name while talking about the actions carried out on that day.
According to NBC news the first of two attacks was at approximately 1:40 PM in Al Noor Mosque, where 190 people, mostly men, were attending a regular Friday prayer. This attack was streamed via Facebook live by the gunman while he was allegedly playing anti-Muslim music.
When he approached the mosque he was greeted by a worshipper who said “Hello Brother,” though despite his friendly greeting this worshiper became the first victim. From there the gunman began shooting worshipers indiscriminate of gender or age killing and injuring dozens of people.
The shooting at Al Noor Mosque took only about six minutes, but the impacts of it were catastrophic. At 1:51PM responders arrived at the scene, though the shooter left three minutes after he was done with the shooting driving erratically and that is also where the live stream stops.
The second attack began at approximately 1:53 PM as the Linwood Islamic Center which is about three miles from Al Noor Mosque. The gunman parked his car in the driveway preventing any vehicles from getting in or out of the parking lot. Inside the center there were about 100 people, according to witness accounts the gunman could not find the front door so he shot through a window killing four and alarming the rest inside.
The mosque's acting imam, Abdul Aziz Wahabzada, tried to stop the attack by allegedly throwing a credit card reader at him. This left the gunman running out of the mosque though he got another gun and fired at him before he headed back inside despite Wahabzada’s cries of “I’m here!” which were made in an attempt to get him distracted.
He killed another three people before fleeing the mosque at 1:58 PM. The police arrived at the mosque at approximately 2:00 PM. Within the same minute the gunman was arrested down the street, giving hope of justice for the victims' families.
The victims of this brutal attack consisted of forty seven males, and four females all of varying ages (3-77) and social standings. The youngest victim was a three year old boy, Mucad Ibrahim, who was there for worship with his older brother and father and according to several witness accounts he ran towards the gunman allegedly believing it was like the violent videos he had seen played.
Four people died in the back of ambulances on the way to the hospital to receive emergency medical attention. Forty others were injured, thirty five within the Al Noor Mosque, and five at Linwood islamic Center. Of these a four year old girl was also injured at Al Noor Mosque but thankfully made a recovery.
While I would like to list the names of these victims and where they were from I want to be sure the families’ have as much privacy as possible so I will tell you the birthplace of them and the number of those from that particular spot to see that New Zealand or the United States were not the only people who were affected by this tragedy. Nine were from Pakistan, seven from India, five from Bangladesh, three from both the United Arab Emirates and Fiji, two from Syria and Somalia, one from Indonesia, one from Jordan, one from Kuwait, and one was a New Zealand native. The article on Aljazeera.com did not account for the other twelve victims.
Tarrant appeared in court on March 16, to a courtroom closed to the public, credited media were allowed in and allowed to film under the condition his face had to be pixelated. He was charged with engaging terrorism, fity one counts of murder and forty accounts of attempted murder. On April 5th he underwent a psychiatric assessment that determined he was fit to stand trial, this was an important piece for later on.
On June 14th 2019, Tarrant pleaded not guilty to all of the charges, the mental health assessment said he was fit for trial. The trial was set for May 4th but was pushed back in September of 2019 to June 2nd, 2020 to avoid coinciding with Ramadan. On March 26th Tarrant changed his plea to guilty on all 92 charges.
Sentencing began on August 24th and concluded on the 27th. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the fifty one murders. He also received life sentences for the terrorism charge and the forty attempted murder charges. It was the first time life imprisonment without parole, the highest sentence available in New Zealand, was imposed.
Image Credit: Hiu Yan Chelsia Choi on Unsplash
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