A woman who fled the gunman at the Al Noor mosque is looking for the stranger who helped her and her five-month old baby escape.
Majda El Hajji wants to thank the woman who pulled over her car and helped her escape, after the shooter killed her friends, father and fellow worshippers. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd
Majda El Hajji wants to thank the woman who pulled her car over to help her after the shooter killed her friends, father and fellow worshippers.
She said Friday was her first time praying at the mosque since the birth of her baby boy, and some worshippers were stopping and playing with him. She would later watch those people fall dead around her as she fled for her life, with her baby in her arms.
"He shot the one behind me and one in front of me... I couldn't see him behind me but people say that he was running at me and he wanted to shoot me too."
A car, driven by a "short, 30 to 40-year old woman," pulled up on the side of the road and El Hajji was able to jump inside.
"I sat inside in the car and she said, 'What's happened?' At this time, some people were still driving. Maybe they had their windows closed so they don't know what happened.
"She started crying and she got outside and just asked people to 'Stop, stop, stop.' "
The woman, who Ms El Hajji recalls wore a black dress with a "food-related" logo on it, then drove along the road to pick up two other Muslim women waiting on a corner.
Ms El Hajji said the three were dropped off at a nearby house, where another woman let them inside and looked after them as they waited for six hours to hear from their families and friends.
She knew her father, 66-year-old Elmi Abdukadir, had been killed, but did not know what had happened to her husband.
Without her phone, which she had left in the mosque - and in too much shock to remember her Facebook password, Ms El Hajji feared the worst. It was not until she met with police later that evening that she found out he was okay.
Nine days on from the shooting and two days on from her father's burial, Ms El Hajji said she wished to reunite with the woman who kindly stopped her car to help. While she remembers the address of the stranger who housed her, she did not know how to track down the driver.
She said the two women showed her that afternoon that "people are all the same".
"I want to say thank you ... though thank you is nothing, really. I wish to see you."