A woman wept as she described how she told a wounded man’s wife over the phone that he had been shot and watched another person die during the horrific Christchurch shooting.
Jill Keats was driving in the area when she saw people running and heard sounds she thought were firecrackers, before she realised the fleeing group were being shot at.
She stopped her car in shock and two men fell to the ground either side during the atrocity in New Zealand.
The New Zealander opened her car doors and pulled the man around to the back of her car for protection and compressed his wounds, with the help of another witness.
“We could hear the ambulance but they couldn’t get to us,” she told BBC news.
“The guy we helped was trying to ring his wife. I said to her, ‘your husband’s been shot at the mosque… go to the hospital and wait for him’.”
As that happened she saw another man, who she had not been able to get to, pass away.
“In the meantime the poor guy across the road passed away and my cars still down there.
“I’m 66, I never thought in my life I’d have to see something like this, not in New Zealand,” she said.
During the ordeal, a bullet also flew over her car as she narrowly avoided becoming a victim herself.
At least 49 people have died after the gun attacks on two mosques.
Forty-eight other people are being treated for gunshot wounds including children, officials said. Police have charged a man with murder, while two other men and a woman remain in custody.
The suspect has been named in media reports as 28-year-old Australian man Brenton Tarrant.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it was a terrorist attack that appeared to have been "well planned".
