Yama Nabi was running 10 minutes late to Friday prayers when he neared the mosque and saw that something was wrong. He parked his car nearby, told his six-year-old daughter Zahal to wait and ran.

He passed the body of a man in the gutter and then a woman. Another man, screaming, was trying to lift and cradle her, while others sought to pull him back. Given her horrific head wound it was clear that she was dead.

Yama Nabi was running late for mosque, where his father Haji-Daoud Nabi died shielding another person from the shooter. Credit:Abigail Dougherty/Stuff

Closer still he saw a Somalian man he often saw at the mosque with his young son, a happy mischievous boy he remembers being scolded for playing when he should have been at prayer. The man was leaning against the wall, apparently shot in the leg. He had taken off his jacket to lay it over the body of his boy.

Police who had just arrived on the scene barred Nabi from entering the mosque but outside a friend, Ramazan, told him once and then twice more, "your father saved my life. Your father saved my life."