New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Sunday said she received the Christchurch gunman's 'manifesto' barely nine minutes before the attack. The attacker was brought down within 36 minutes, she told the press while announcing a crucial cabinet meeting on Monday.
Ardern said by the time a police plan was in place, the 911 number was already buzzing, shots had been fired. The pocket to react was slim, very very slim, she said, and promised all-out help to the kin of every member killed.
Hours after the attack on Friday, PM Ardern had addressed the press, calling the shooting as an act of terrorism. She said that people have been taken into custody. She went on to say that New Zealand is a place with over 200 ethnicities and those with extremist views have no place in the country.
The attack, which took the lives of 49 people, has shocked New Zealand to its very core. The gunman, a white supremacist, has been identified as a 28-year-old Australian. Brenton Tarrant had written a 78-page manifesto in which he said that he was going to New Zealand just to train and carry out the attack.
Tarrant also wrote down names on the guns he used to kill the innocent worshippers in the mosques. Some of the names were Anton Lundin Petterson, Alexandre Bissonnette, Skanderbeg, Antonio Bragadin, and Charles Martel. Anton shot a teacher and student in a school in Sweden while Alexandre is known for going on a shooting spree in a mosque in Quebec city.
All the people whose names were on the guns have a relationship with violence.
