A royal commission of inquiry into the shooting was instructed to examine only the events before shots began to ring out at Masjid Al-Noor, the first the gunman struck. Two investigations of the attack did not explore such questions: a lengthy trial scheduled for Brenton Tarrant, the terrorist, was averted in March 2020 when he abruptly pleaded guilty to all charges, with evidence gathered in the case against him shelved. But the families of those killed, as well as the survivors and witnesses, said they still had questions about what had happened in the chaotic aftermath of the attack and whether lives could have been saved if the emergency response had unfolded differently.
