Brenton Tarrant

The gunman first attacked the Al Noor Mosque, the first mosque in the South Island, opened in June 1985.

It is located on Deans Avenue in the suburb of Riccarton.

The Linwood Islamic Centre was attacked shortly after the Al Noor Mosque.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant (born 27 October 1990), a white Australian man, was 28 years old at the time of the shootings.

He grew up in Grafton, New South Wales, where he attended Grafton High School.

Tarrant's parents separated when he was young: this, along with other events including the loss of his family home in a fire and the death of his grandfather, led him to be traumatised and to start suffering from social anxiety.

Following the separation of his parents, Tarrant and his sister Lauren Tarrant, lived with their mother with her new partner.

The relationship became violent, with the partner assaulting his mother, him and his sister.

The two children began to live with their father Rodney Tarrant.

He began to gain weight from age 12 to 15 which led to bullying at school, where he also had very few friends.

He was disengaged at school, while also being unusually knowledgeable in certain topics such as the Second World War.

Around 12 he had concerns about immigration, particularly by Muslim migrants into Western countries.

He started using 4chan when he was 14.

He once told his sister that he thought he was autistic and possibly sociopathic.

Around 2007 when Tarrant was either 16 or 17, the father was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma.

Tarrant began to exercise at gyms to cope and lost 52 kilograms.

He joined the Big River Gym in Grafton at the end of his final year at Grafton High School and qualified as a personal trainer in mid-2009.

In 2010 Tarrant discovered his father dead by suicide after having previously agreed with his father that he would do so.

He inherited A$457,000 from his father, which largely came from the settlement of a claim for damages arising out of the exposure to asbestos, which had caused his father's mesothelioma.

He stopped working at the Big River Gym in 2012 after suffering an injury and decided to use his inherited money to invest and travel.

From 2012 onward, he visited several countries.

He always travelled alone, except for a trip to North Korea.

In March 2013, he travelled to New Zealand for a holiday, where he stayed with a gaming friend for three days.

The gaming friend and his parents were avid firearm users.

They took Tarrant to a shooting club where he had his first experience with firearms.

The attack was linked to an increase in white supremacy and alt-right extremism globally observed since about 2015.

Politicians and world leaders condemned it, and then-Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern described it as "one of New Zealand's darkest days".

The government established a royal commission into its security agencies in the wake of the shootings, which were the deadliest in modern New Zealand history and the worst ever committed by an Australian national.

In 2015, he took a trip to Ukraine and came into contact with extreme right-wing groups.

Police in Bulgaria and Turkey investigated Tarrant's visits to their countries.

It opened in early 2018.

It is located on Linwood Avenue in the suburb of Linwood.

The Christchurch mosque shootings were two consecutive mass shootings on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019.

They were committed by Brenton Tarrant who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, firstly at the Al Noor Mosque at 1:40p.m. and later at the Linwood Islamic Centre at 1:52p.m.

Tarrant was arrested after his vehicle was rammed by a police unit as he was driving to a third mosque in Ashburton.

He live-streamed the first shooting on Facebook, marking the first successfully live-streamed far-right terror attack, and had published an online manifesto before the attack.

On 26 March 2020, he pleaded guilty to 51 murders, 40 attempted murders, and engaging in a terrorist act, and in August was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole – the first such sentence in New Zealand.

The commission submitted its report to the government on 26 November 2020, the details of which were made public on 7 December.

The shooting has inspired copycat attacks, especially due to its live-streamed nature.

In response to this incident, the United Nations designated March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.