MR WILLIAMS
Certainly, firstly thank you to the panel for this great opportunity of being part of this.  I was with an aunt of mine, my family  and I, we attended a birthday party, it was her 80th birthday and we left there rather late.  And I decided that - or  suggested to my wife she rather stay home with the kids and I go through to  church  end of Tape 18, Side A ...   [indistinct] it was rather quiet you know it was a winter evening and light drizzle and nothing seemed very suspicious to me.
I entered the church and became part of the Congregation and participated up to the point where two young persons had rendered a duet.  Now they were close to finishing this song when suddenly the doors where the perpetrators entered - when suddenly these doors just flung open.  And nobody could - I myself I couldn't imagine that it was a possible  or imminent attack.
At first I heard a gun shot and immediately thereafter for the first time, now, I've seen in - I am in the Post Offices you know - they have these models of hand grenades but for the first I actually see - saw a hand grenade hurling towards a live audience.  And while this hand grenade was still airborne the other gentlemen -  there were I saw about three - three people and there was possibly a fourth person.
The second person while this hand grenade was still airborne, he opened fire with what I will call a very heavy machine gun.  I say a heavy machine gun because the explosions were extremely loud, extremely powerful and I know it was a machine gun because of the type of firing.   And he was just spraying bullets you know randomly just across the Congregation and I was sitting on the end - on the end f the pew and that pew was rather full.
And you know everything seem like very slow motion, you just cannot imagine.   But when I really realised that it was an attack when I saw the explosion coming from the loop of the - of the rifle.  You could actually see it  the smoke and the fire -  the explosion.  And we tried to take cover and the pew was full and we  went down rather slowly but I managed to get on the - on the floor and I managed to get down on the - between the pews.
I curled myself up to sort of hide my face from the gun firing.  I curled myself up  and just prayed and hoped that I'll be okay but soon after I just  felt the thud of the bullet hitting my lower back and it was like - it was like  a tension wire snapping and with that went a lot of pain. I just - I had stretched my body and my lower body just became very numb.
Now I don't know much - too much about ammunition and arms but I heard from guys that went to the border that ammunition can be rather lethal and they can actually rip your body apart and that is what I thought happened to me,  that my lower body was ripped from my upper body because it was totally numb.
Nevertheless I was on the floor and in severe pain.  Help did come to me immediately in the form of my fellow brethren. What they did was they took off the jersey I was wearing and they actually stuffed the sleeve of the jersey into the hole where the bullet actually went through.  I lost a lot of blood in the process and became extremely weak.
And fortunately the ambulance arrived fairly quickly to give further attention and medical help.  That is basically what the attack looked like from my perspective because that's all I could see because I had to go down between the pews and  I couldn't witness what happened sort of after going down into them.  But it seem like a day because I thought these guys were actually moving up the pews and trying to gun down each and every person - it was absolute horror.  But  thank God I came out of it - not too okay but I'm grateful for my measure of health I'm enjoying at the moment.
My injuries I think were - are pretty severe for a young man of 40 in the prime of my years I guess -  my injuries are pretty severe. I have total paralysis of the left foot, my left leg muscles have collapsed and I have numbness in a lots of places in my body.  And also right foot especially my three small toes.
My one seat has collapsed completely and there's no chance that it will recover because I was given a year for it to mend and it did not mend after the year.  And doctor feels that there's no chance of a recovery as far as that is concerned.   I still suffer severe pain, thank God for medication of which I use a lot and that helps me - helps me through the day, thank you.