PETER Heathcoate and staff from nearby Budget Vets were first on the scene following the shooting and ran to the aid of the injured women.

Veterinary surgeon Sarah Cook and veterinary nurse Sara Morris alerted Mr Heathcoate, a former first responder with the Welsh Ambulance Service, who along with an off-duty nurse ran to help.

He said: “I have never seen anything like it. I did not know what I was going into, whether people had been shot, whether they were still alive.”

As he approached the salon he said a distraught women ran out and collapsed with shock.

As a man helped her he went inside and found Mrs Williams on the floor with blood pouring from her left leg.

Mr Heathcoate spoke to her until paramedics arrived. As he was tending to her he spotted the discarded shotgun on the floor, which he described as dark-coloured with a very elaborate barrel.

Mr Heathcoate’s colleague Ms Cook tended to a 92-yearold injured women who had blood coming from her head.

As she was being treated the woman described how she had tried to protect Mrs Williams by kicking over a table, which lay broken on the floor.

Mr Heathcoate said: “She was very shocked, but said she was trying to protect the woman who was shot, which is amazing.”

He praised his staff and said he was really proud of their quick-thinking actions, adding: “They did tremendously well, while so many people will run away from this type of scene they ran towards it to help.”

A woman who was having her hair done at Cut Above The Rest hair salon in Church Street found out about the shooting when an elderly lady who was at Carol Ann’s hair salon at the time of the shooting was brought in to have her hair finished.

She said the women, who still had perm rollers in her hair, was shaken and said the gunman burst into Carol Ann’s shouting and screaming, before shooting his wife in the leg. She said owner Carol Ann McSheedy tried to wrestle the gun from him before she went outside to raise the alarm.