RIDDLED WITH BULLETS Disabled Abbas' ongoing struggle

While he’s lucky to be alive, the pain is a constant reminder of the attack

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A year ago, pregnant Zeynia Endrise was seated in a room at Christchurch Hospital alongside dozens of strangers, their lives intersected by 17 minutes of terror during Friday prayers at two Christchurch mosques. Among the dozens of victims ferried to hospital that day was her husband Abbas Tahir. Upset, and in shock, all the tearful young mum could do was wait, and wonder if the baby growing inside her would ever get to meet his father.

There’s never a day the Ethiopian-born mum of two doesn’t relive that nightmare, recalling the fear and dread of not knowing if her badly injured soulmate had survived being shot as he fled the Al Noor Mosque. It’s a desperate 24 hours she can’t wipe from her memory.

“It’s not easy at all,” shares Zeynia, who only found out her husband had gone to hospital through a phone call from Uber driver Jill Keats, 66, as she held the bleeding bakery assistant lying beside her car.

“I was just crying and crying and crying. I wasn’t able to do anything because he was unconscious for six days.”