Sara Zelenak was dressed for Saturday night.
At 21, far from home and with boundless potential to do and be whatever she pleased, this was the night she planned and looked forward to. This was the night that would round out a week of nannying, of caring, of responsibility.
Dinner, perhaps a couple of drinks, a friend in tow. A special outfit.
This was London, she was from Brisbane, and the world felt smaller than it ever had before. The world was hers, and she could mould a Sara-shaped hole in it.
Five minutes before terror would strike with uncompromising force, Sara Zelanak would open Whatsapp for the last time in a while. Perhaps she would read a message. Perhaps she would send one.
And then, out of nowhere, and certainly not in the blueprint of Saturday night, a white van would deliberately mow down pedestrians within metres of the bar she and her friends sat at. Sara and her friend Pri Gonçalves would get up and run and run and run, not looking back and certainly not stopping to talk about an escape plan. They would just run, terror of terror propelling them forward.
“I ran thinking she would be running with me, but I looked back and she wasn’t there,” Pri would later tell Fairfax.
Sara was wearing high heels. Her high heels, Pri believes, may have slowed her down as she ran. These heels - a shoe choice common to Saturday nights and 21-year-olds - a stark reminder that terror hits the unsuspecting.
A stark reminder that no matter how much we talk of it, and no matter the size of our fear, no one plans, on a Saturday night, to be running from terrorists.
***
Metres from the London Grind, the bar Sara would disappear from, 28-year-old Australian nurse Kirsty Boden would see the same carnage from a different angle.
Top Comments
I've sat in places and thought what if it happened here too. Then I consider I'm lucky that it isn't and doesn't often. I find it so tragic that we live in a world and time where this sort of thought becomes common. If we live in fear and scared though they win! And they don't get to do that. They don't get to kill people to create "terror" and send a message and win by making us feel what they want! That's what I hold onto most of all. Having said that I sat here watching footage saying oh my god, I know where that is, I've been exactly there a couple of years ago and I wonder why they keep successfully targeting the U.K.- it highlights a fundamental security problem. We mourn these facts, the statistics knowing people are more than a number, We remember those who died but we become stronger and we band together rather than apart.
I posted this on another thread:
In order to rationalise away fear, I use probability. So, while these
terrorists acts are deliberate, they occur at a certain rate and that
rate is very low when placed alongside the road death toll. So, rather
than being concerned with accidental vs. malicious, I look at the chance
of this occurring to me or my family members and that, thankfully, is
bloody low.