Norway: Girl's chilling text messages revealed as dead are named

Published on Tuesday 26 July 2011 20:56

A TEENAGER caught up in the Utoya massacre sent desperate text messages to her mother, pleading for help as other youngsters were being killed, it emerged yesterday.

The atrocity was chillingly chronicled by Julie Bremnes, 16, who escaping uninjured after hiding behind rocks on the island's shore, from where she sent a series of texts to her mother.

News of the dramatic exchange came as Norwegian police began releasing the names of some of the 76 people killed in Friday's attacks - 68 on Utoya and eight from a bomb in central Oslo.

Among them was Gunnar Linaker, 23, the first of the victims of the island shootings, who told his father by phone: "Dad, dad, someone is shooting", then hung up.

Norwegian newspapers posted the names of several dozen other victims or those missing. They include a 14-year-old Norwegian boy and a girl from Georgia, who were also at the island youth camp organised by Norway's ruling Labour party.

In one of Julie's texts, she urged: "Tell the police that they must be quick. People are dying here!"

The exchange with her mother Marianne, who is believed to have been hundreds of miles away in Tromso in northern Norway, continued for more than an hour during Anders Breivik's rampage.

In it, Julie's mother urged her to stay hidden. Marianne watched coverage on television, yet clearly had no inkling of the scale of the carnage on the island.

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Julie initially phoned her mother at 5:10pm to tell her of "a crazy man who is shooting here", and to call the police.

Marianne asked her daughter to send her updates by text so she knew she was still alive. Half an hour later, a clearly frantic Julie texted her to urge the police to get there fast. "They must hurry!" she wrote.

Her mother tried to reassure her by saying the police were on their way, and asked Julie to keep texting every five minutes.

Either optimistic, trying to calm her daughter or just unaware of the horrific unfolding of events, Marianne then texted: "The police know and they have had many calls. It is going well, Julie."

Marianne also advised her the police might already have arrived - but they did not reach the island for another 45 minutes. At 6:15pm, apparently unaware the gunman was dressed as a policeman, Julie texted: "The police are here."

Marianne warned her that Breivik was in police uniform, and 15 minutes later her daughter told her he was still shooting.

Meanwhile, Marianne had been in touch with the father of someone else on the island and told Julie he had managed to swim to the mainland.

Julie then kept asking whether the gunman had been captured, with her mother providing updates from the television.However, it was not until after 7pm, when Julie asked again, that Marianne was finally able to tell her: "Now they have taken him!"

However, the police's eventual arrival on the island and Breivik's surrender came far too late for those who were shot or drowned trying to escape.

Gunnar Linaker, from Bardu in northern Norway, died in hospital the day after the shooting. He was described by his father last night as "a calm, big teddy-bear with lots of humour and lots of love".

Mr Linaker said he had been on the phone with his son when the shooting started. "He said to me: 'Dad, dad, someone is shooting,' and then he hung up." Gunnar's 17-year-old sister, who was with him on the island, survived.

Also among the first victims named by the police were Tove Aashill Knutsen, 56, Hanna Orvik Endresen, 61 and Kai Hauge, 33, all residents of Oslo, who were killed in the bomb attack on the Norwegian capital.

Ms Knutsen was a union official on her way home. Union chief Hans Felix said: "Tove was a happy girl who was well liked by us all, and it feels unreal that she is no longer with us."

Police said further names will be published daily at 5pm UK time once relatives had been informed.

They said only a "very small number" of people were still missing, and it was very unlikely they were alive.

The attacks have stunned Norway, with police saying that the gathering of 200,000 people in Oslo on Monday was the largest the city had ever seen.

The atrocities have also shocked the large number of Norwegian students studying at Scottish universities, especially Edinburgh and Strathclyde.

One Norwegian student in Glasgow told of her colleague's lucky escape.

She said: "A student from Strathclyde happened to be at the island where the second terror attack happened earlier that day, but left a few hours before the horrible event."

Health experts said yesterday that survivors of the attacks face being tormented by flashbacks, fear, guilt and anger. However, some warned against a flood of trauma counselling, saying that survivors should be allowed to go through a natural pro- cess of recovery whenever possible.

Monica Thompson, a clinical psychologist who co-ordinated the trauma response to the terrorists bombings in London in July 2007, said that it was crucial not to push people into formal counselling until they needed it. "What they tried to do after 9/11 was to give everybodycounselling and therapy, literally en masse. And that actually isn't helpful, because those responses of fear, shock, thinking about it all the time and having nightmares are all perfectly normal." It's a natural process."