I played dead for almost five hours until help came: survivor

A photo taken on September 25, 2013 shows Kenyan butcher Fred Bosire giving a witness testimony of the Westgate shopping mall attack in Nairobi. Photo/FILE

What you need to know:

  • Britain’s Sky News reported that video captured by a former military personnel who helped in the rescue and which it obtained showed people disperse as the attackers got inside Nakumatt supermarket, firing gunshots.

Mr Fred Bosire, a survivor of the Westgate Shopping Mall attack, told how he pretended to be dead in order to avoid being shot by the assailants after being spotted in video footage taken during the siege.

Britain’s Sky News reported that video captured by a former military personnel who helped in the rescue and which it obtained showed people disperse as the attackers got inside Nakumatt supermarket, firing gunshots.

Among the groups running away were Nakumatt staffers. Some went behind counters, others hid down aisles and hid themselves in store cupboards.

About eight hid under the meat counter in the meat section of the supermarket.

One of them was Mr Bosire, a butcher at Westgate’s Nakumatt supermarket.

He said he hid behind the counter when the assault began and spent almost five hours lying on the supermarket floor.

The footage, which Sky News says is “far too gruesome to show in any detail and are extremely hard to view”, shows a pile of mangled bodies with a lot of blood around them, the station reports.

But, two feet suddenly move slightly.

They belonged to Mr Bosire, who had a wound on his leg and was lying on his stomach. He was playing dead.

Days later, at MP Shah Hospital, the man revealed he spent up to five hours lying next to dead shoppers and fellow workers.

During this time, he didn’t even realise he had been shot. He describes how he remembers hearing the “squishy sound of meat” and thought that the meat on his counter was what had been hit, only to later realise he had been shot in the leg.

Mr Bosire was still on the floor. The anguish wasn’t ending. His wife called his phone. He told her not to tell their son about his death until he completed his primary school exams next month, and that she shouldn’t get in touch with him again.

“I told her not to call me again because I was dying,” he said.

Much afterwards, the survivor noticed army boots and heard a soldier talking about his astonishment at the number of deceased victims.

The army man shook Mr Bosire’s leg to find out whether he was alive. Then, Mr Bosire says, “I tried to call out but all that came out was a guttural sound. But it was enough.”