Cashmere High School principal Mark Wilson speaks with his students at the school. Three students from the high school were at the Al Noor Mosque on Friday. Photo / AP
Cashmere High School principal Mark Wilson speaks with his students at the school. Three students from the high school were at the Al Noor Mosque on Friday. Photo / AP
Three students from Cashmere High School were at the Al Noor Mosque for Friday prayers when an attacker burst in as part of a rampage that left 50 dead across Christchurch. When classes resume Monday, none will be there.
Two of the students are presumed dead and the third is in the hospital with gunshot wounds.
"I've lost my little boy. He's just turned 14. I'll get it together again," he told the newspaper.
"I remember him as my baby who I nearly lost when he was born. Such a struggle he's had throughout all his life. He's been unfairly treated but he's risen above that and he's very brave. A brave little soldier. It's so hard ... to see him just gunned down by someone who didn't care about anyone or anything," Milne said. "I know where he is. I know he's at peace."
Sayyad Milne, a 14 year old student at Cashmere High School, was last seen lying on the floor of the mosque. Photo / Supplied
Current students weren't the only ones caught in Friday's mass shootings, the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country's modern history. A former Cashmere High School student is also believed to have been killed, as was the father of another student.
Outside the school on Sunday, students came in a trickle to lean bouquets of flowers up against a construction barricade, evidence of the ongoing rebuilding from Christchurch's 2011 earthquake.
Principal Mark Wilson said counsellors and trauma specialists will be on hand when classes resume today at the diverse school of more than 2,000.
"I'm very confident in our staff; I'm very confident in our school community. It's made up of awesome people," Wilson said. "It's still going to be hard. There's going to be a lot of grief. There's going to be a lot of sadness. I think we've also got to be very patient with each other."
Wilson declined to talk about the boys believed to have been killed, but confirmed three students were at the mosque on Friday and said one remained hospitalised with gunshot wounds to the leg.
The principal noted that schools can often be a safe place for children coping with trauma. He is also encouraging students to take up their own acts of love to counteract the tragedy.
Cashmere High School student Oki Tillia spent the weekend baking and collecting toys to take to workers and victims of the attack. Photo / AP
"It can be quite easy to get overwhelmed with all of the hate and the trauma of this situation and what's really important is that love will triumph in this situation," Wilson said. "It's often in the small things that you can do in terms of visiting people, making a cup of tea for somebody, having a smile, giving some support and some love."
Students Finn Barclay and Oki Tillia, both 17, spent the weekend doing baking and collecting toys to take to workers and victims of the attacks. They are also organising a student vigil Monday afternoon outside one of the mosques that was attacked.
"We're all going to have candles and we're just going to light one up and we're just going to pass it on, just pass on the love, the light that all these Cantabrians carry," Tillia said, using the name for people from Canterbury province, where Christchurch is located.
Sayyad's half-sister, Brydie Henry, remembered him as a good-natured, kind teenager who adored football. His mother, Noraini, was also in the mosque and managed to escape, Henry told the Stuff news website.
His parents and two siblings, 15-year-old twins Shuayb and Cahaya, are all "at home just waiting," she said.
"They're just waiting and they don't know what to do," she said.
