Christchurch terror attack inquest: Police response under scrutiny
Moments before an Australian terrorist opened fire in a Christchurch mosque, an email was sent warning of what was ahead. See how they reacted.
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“It will be a nutter, I’m sure,” a New Zealand parliamentary staff member said to police.
It was Friday afternoon, March 15, 2019, and the staff member was quickly scanning an email sent to then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and other politicians and media outlets, describing an assault on mosques using firearms and explosives.
The emailwas then forwarded to parliament security from the prime minister’s office. Within two minutes of receiving it, the staff member called police, believing it to be a hoax.
Six minutes had passed since the email was sent by Australian Brenton Tarrant and police were getting the first of many calls about a terrorist atrocity that shocked the world.
The evidence about the emergency call was made at the long-awaited inquest into the Christchurch mosque attacks when Tarrant, 33, who was from Grafton in NSW, killed 51 people and injured 40 others.
The inquest is being held to see if anything can be learnt to prevent another similar tragedy.
Tarrant is serving a life sentence for the massacre without chance of parole.
Attached to the email was the terrorist’s manifesto that described what he was about to do. In a country like New Zealand it seemed like it would surely be a hoax, but the staff member wasn’t taking chances.
“There was stuff in there that … I didn’t want to leave it any longer … the title of the email, the content was enough that I felt I needed to report that pretty quickly,” the staff member, whose name has been suppressed, said.
“I had no idea at that time it would lead to what it sadly did lead to,” he said.
EMERGENCY CALL
The immediate response by emergency services has been revealed at the inquest, including how senior staff missed the first details because the initial call warning of a possible attack was given a Priority 2 status.
The call from Parliamentary Services should have been upgraded to a Priority 1, Bret Watkins of the police communications centre said.
The email took a grave new significance once the calls about Al Noor Mosque began.
As a flood of calls streamed into the centre about the incident, the call from the parliament staffer wasn’t acted on as police communications staff began to respond to the unfolding tragedy.
Mr Watkins said a supervisor then told him about the call from parliament that there was going to be a shooting at a mosque, reported the New Zealand Herald.
“It’s already happening,” he replied.
Under cross examination, Mr Watkins agreed he should have acted after the supervisor told him about the email and upgraded the call. That way, staff could have examined the email and been alert to any potential targets.
David Boldt, the counsel assisting the coroner, put it to him the information should have been “shouted from the rooftops”.
“Due to the number of P1 events we were reading, that information was overlooked,” Mr Watkins conceded.
LIVESTREAM CAUSED CONFUSION
Tarrant livestreamed his attack on the Al Noor Mosque, where 43 of his victims were killed, with the horrific footage shared widely on social media. Radio New Zealand reported the footage also led to confusion for shocked police who saw the rampage online in a replay andmistakenly thought it was live.
Officers had just cleared Al Noor Mosque and were heading to Linwood Islamic Centre, where more shots had been fired.
“I thought I had stuffed up and left an offender there and he was killing people,”
an officer with name suppression told the inquest.
Police rushed back to Al Noor Mosque because panicked calls were coming in of a second attack, meaning precious time was lost while the rampage was in fact continuing at Linwood Islamic Centre.
Inside Al Noor was a scene of absolute carnage.
The officer said nothing could have prepared him for the shock of seeing dozens of bodies piled up on each other, the blood, and the smell.
He was asked by a lawyer representing the victims’ families if there was anything that could have improved their response time.
The officer told her it was possible he and another officer could have arrived up to three minutes earlier if theyhad not been reliant on a pager alert.
But the outcome of that is unknown.
“We could have stopped the offender, or we could be dead,” he said.
CONFUSION AND DELAYS
The first paramedics didn’t enter Al Noor until half an hour after the gunman had left, and victims were left inside alone for up to 10 minutes while police stood guard outside.
Police were worried the gunman would return and continue the attack, so kept watch on injured people outside and members of the public who rushed to help.
When he was arrested, the gunman told police there were another nine active shooters in Christchurch, which added to the mayhem.
An officer who also has name suppression said the scene was “chaotic”.
“Even though I had been involved in a number of critical incidents in the police, it was the only time in my career that I thought this was my last day due to the threats that existed at the time.”
ESCAPE PATH BLOCKED
As desperate worshippers at Al Noor tried to flee to safety, they were initially stopped by a locked emergency door.
Three men gave evidence they smashed the glass in the heavy wooden door to enable terrified people to scramble through.
Ahmad Alayedy described the scene.
“I tried to open the emergency door but it didn’t open,” he said.
People piled up behind him and the pressure was so great he suffered broken ribs.
Outside, he hid behind a car and narrowly missed being gunned down himself.
“I could still hear the shooting and people yelling … then the shooter stopped. I stood up to see what was going on … I could see the man with the gun over the cars, he was standing near the gates,” Mr Alayedy said.
“He was holding the gun up against his chest, it was a big gun. As soon as he saw me he started shooting at me and I ducked back down behind my car quickly. The bullets were coming just 2cm away from me.
“I know the gunman was trying to shoot me – he looked me in the eye and then started shooting at me.”
The inquest is expected to continue until early next month.
andrew.koubaridis@news.com.au
Originally published as Christchurch terror attack inquest: Police response under scrutiny
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