It was March 15, 2019, and the 22-year-old Dunedin man was driving home from his morning engineering classes at the University of Canterbury, and it would soon be time for afternoon prayers.
He contemplated praying at home, but he had not been to his new local mosque for two weeks and did not want to miss a third.
So he performed a U-turn, to pray with his brothers and sisters.
That U-turn would change his life.
He first knew something was wrong when he heard "big shots" inside the Al Noor Mosque.
That was at 1.40pm, when a black-clad man, weighed down by weapons and ammunition stormed the mosque and opened fire on those inside.
At first, Mr Boztas thought multiple people were shooting.
"I could hear words, like some people screaming coming in, and I thought there were many people coming in and shooting us.
"The first thing that came into my head was hunters, you know, because that’s what I thought — some hunters are coming in and shooting us, not just one dude."
People were running around, screaming, trying to escape. But a door would not open and a window would not break, so he did the only thing he could think of.
"I just closed my eyes like I was dead. My mind was just on survival.
"I just wanted to act dead and then find a way to get out of there."
It was while he was lying on the ground, shots ringing out around him, that he felt something akin to a bee sting on his leg.
He touched it, and when he lifted his hand, he saw blood.
"I was calm. I didn’t panic — I didn’t do anything stupid."
He talks about getting shot equally as calmly, almost as if he was discussing something that happened to someone else.
But he almost absent-mindedly touches his leg as he talks, brushing the 20cm scar he now has as a permanent reminder of the attack.
A raised line of scar tissue is not the only thing he was left with.
The bullet had travelled to his liver, and while shrapnel was removed from his leg, it was too dangerous to take it from his abdomen.
His lead levels are fine at the moment, but if they were to rise, it could lead to blood poisoning.
Perhaps luckily, at the time he was so focused on escaping the massacre, he did not fully register the impact of his injury.
He managed to stand up and headed towards a window that had been broken, where people were escaping.
Then he saw the boy on the ground.
"I couldn’t run past him so I stopped and I did CPR on him.
"He had his phone on to his mum, so I picked up the phone and said, ‘please come to mosque, there’s a kid here, there’s shooting happening’, and she started panicking and everything and then I put the phone down and I just closed that kid’s eyes, and I carried on."
Mr Boztas had been calm and self-assured, but as he recounted the moment he had to leave the teenager behind, his voice broke for the first time.
"I took that risk when I was trying to save that kid’s life, because he could have shot me there easily.
"While I was doing CPR on him, that was when the shooting was actually happening.
"What I saw inside was not what you want to see. It was just a room of red walls."
He managed to get outside and walked about 50m before his leg gave out and he could no longer move.
He could see people lying on the ground, surrounded by family and friends.
They had escaped, but succumbed to their injuries after making it outside.
Meanwhile, inside the mosque, the shooting was continuing but police had arrived.
"We could hear people inside the mosque screaming," he recalled.
"Out the back, all you could see were some victims and 10-15 armed offender officers looking around, searching, jumping over the walls to see if there was anyone else."
When the immediate danger was over, he spent about an hour and a-half outside, waiting to be taken to hospital.
There were so many victims, in such serious condition, that he simply had to sit and wait his turn.
"One of the police members, he was with me just telling me: ‘It’s going to be all good ... just be patient’."
Once he arrived at the hospital, hours waiting in the emergency department led to a six-hour surgery.
His Dunedin family rushed to Christchurch to be at his bedside.
"They told me the five-hour drive felt like a 40-hour drive."
After a week, he had another important visitor — the mother of the teenager he tried to save.
"She came and she asked me if I was the last one to see her son, so that really got me and it still gets me to this day.
"I just couldn’t say anything. It was just really sad."
The day after the attack, he watched the video the alleged shooter had livestreamed.
At first, he felt nothing.
When he watched it again after three weeks, that had changed.
"As soon as I saw the first person he targeted, I couldn’t watch it. The inside of me just went ... it was anxiety, you know?
"So I couldn’t watch it. I forced my friend to delete the video, and he did."
While the attack was an extreme example, it was not the first time Mr Boztas had been targeted for his religion.
He was stood down at high school for retaliating against racist attacks. In one incident, he was put in a headlock.
The response following the terror attack had also been a mixed bag.
Good in real life, bad online.
"In real life, there’s a lot of people you know who give you support and say they’re sorry and give you a hug, and I really appreciate that.
"When you read articles, you see these people still talking bad about us ... they still don’t want to listen. When I see those comments, it’s really upsetting that they don’t put themselves into that situation.
"But they should, and they should realise it’s not easy losing someone that you love."
In the year since the attacks, he had certainly not found things easy.
But he was determined to keep looking ahead.
"If I overthink about my past, I’m going to live in my past — I’m not going to move forward in my future.
"Because this is what this guy wants. He wants us to be depressed and live in our past.
"If I do that, he’s going to be happy."
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Comments
Mustafa much respect.... I wish you, your family and friends well, may you get your wish of your own family, lots to travel and becoming a police officer, your attitude is awesome, I can't imagine what you have seen and been through, may you live in peace and happiness.