On Friday March 15, 2019, a gunman walked into two Christchurch mosques and killed 49 people.
It was a shocking, brutal assault, the kind New Zealanders had told themselves happened only in other countries. But the terror of a hate-filled mass murder had visited our nation now too.
This was the end of our innocence.
Friday prayers at the Masjid Al Noor were scheduled to start at 1:30pm and run for about 40 minutes, but there were still a few cars pulling into the carpark as prayers began.
There were about 300 worshippers gathering – New Zealanders whose places of birth included Afghanistan, India, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, the Philippines, Jordan, Turkey, Malaysia – but also some visitors from abroad, including Bangladeshi cricketers who were due to play the Black Caps at the Hagley Oval the next day.
Shoes were lined up on shelves at the door, and those inside were wearing socks, or were barefoot.
At Linwood Masjid, 5km to the west, more than 100 more worshippers were also coming together.
A couple of minutes after prayers began, a man got into his car in an industrial park just a couple of hundred metres to the west of the mosque, and launched a Facebook livestream. He’d just published internet links to a document outlining his murderous racist ideology; now he was going to broadcast a video of the atrocities he would commit in their name.
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2019/03/end-of-our-innocence/
