Couple shot in Tunisia fight back to recovery together

By Neil Connery: ITV News Correspondent

Amid the birthday cards and cake, Kirsty Murray and her fiancé Radley Ruszkiewicz reflect on how close they came to never seeing this day.

The terror attack in Sousse in Tunisia almost cost this young couple their lives.

Kirsty's first visit home from Broomfield Hospital in Essex where she's already undergone nine operations came a month after the attack on her birthday at the end of July.

The 26-year-old nursery nurse lost six pints of blood when she was shot in both legs by the gunmen.

Radley, 29, has made good progress recovering from his shrapnel injuries but is all too aware of the effect of the trauma they're both living with.

"Mentally I still feel I'm in the middle of the attack. I don't feel I've gotten away yet. I still feel I'm not safe," Radley says as his left leg shakes throughout our interview.

The legacy of this attack is still being played out in the lives of those affected.

As she celebrated her birthday, Kirsty told me of her darkest moment during that day in Sousse.

With the gunman firing next to her, Kirsty tried to take cover.

They ran for their lives into a hotel corridor but the gunman shot Kirsty at close range.

She survived thanks to a Tunisian who rushed her to hospital. Kirsty was put in the back of a pick-up truck and driven to hospital.

"I still thought I was going to die because I was in the back of a pick up truck with nothing on the back to keep me in I was just holding on. I was losing so much blood and I looked at my legs. At the hospital later I had to think about whether I was going to have my legs or whether they would be amputated," she said.

Radley recalls those horrifying moments during the attack, "When the grenade separated us I was on the floor I could see the man shoot and I was laying there as well and shouted for Kirsty a few times and I heard her faintly saying 'I'm here'.

Kirsty interrupts, "I said I love you."

Radley pauses, "And I couldn't get up and couldn't get to her."

Radley's legs were struck by shrapnel from the grenade leaving him unable to rescue his fiancé. But Kirsty says he saved her life: "If I was further back then I would have died but Radley got me out of that room when the grenade went off and you saved me"

Radley recalls his darkest moment:

The couple spent their first three days after the attack in a Tunisian hospital.

They told me then of the ordeal they'd survived but the suffering they still endured. Those first painful steps on the long road to recovery still feel like yesterday but they are helping each other through it.

Kirsty was thrilled to be back home for the first time to celebrate her birthday.

"It's Amazing. I never thought I'd see my house again. I never thought I'd see Radley or my family again. It was amazing to pull up to my house. I was just staring. I never thought I'd see it again," she said.

One young couple confronted by terror who fought back with courage and love.