Wellington
The daughter of a victim of the New Zealand mosque shooting victim told Australian white supremacist guilt of murdering at least 50 Muslim worshippers, on Monday, that he was ‘nothing’.
The daughter of Linda Armstrong sobbed as she addressed the court in Christchurch on Tuesday, the second day of the sentencing hearing.
“You robbed me of my mother, of her love and strength. Likely you will also never again feel the love and warmth of your mother’s hug either. While I have pity for your mum, I have no emotion for you. You are nothing,” said Angela Armstrong.
“While he will remain trapped in a cage my mum is free. I therefore challenge Tarrant to use his remaining lifetime to consider the beauty and life to be found in diversity and freedom that he sought to distort and destroy.”
Tarrant, a 29-year-old Australian, is scheduled to be sentenced this week after pleading guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders and one charge of committing a terrorist act during the 2019 shooting rampage in the city of Christchurch which he live streamed on Facebook.
Read more: New Zealand mosque attacker to face survivors, victims’ families in court next week
A murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The judge can impose a life term without parole, a sentence that has never been used in New Zealand.
Tarrant sat in grey prison clothes cornered by guards as Angela Armstrong looked at him and described the “ripple effects” of the murder of her 65-year-old mother on her family.
Kyron Gosse, nephew of Linda Armstrong, said the shooter had come to New Zealand as a guest, and used that privilege to destroy a family that had lived here for seven generations.
“Filled with his own racist agenda this coward hid behind his big powerful guns and shot little old Linda from afar,” said Gosse.
Tarrant “stole our nation’s innocence”, said Gosse. New Zealand had been relatively free from major gun violence until the country’s worst mass shooting.
On Monday, prosecutors told the court Tarrant had carefully planned the attacks to cause maximum carnage by accumulating high-powered firearms and ammunition, training at rifle clubs and studying mosque layouts.
While most of Tarrant’s victims were at Al Noor mosque, he killed seven people at the Linwood mosque, including Linda Armstrong, before being detained en route to a third.—Reuters
