'I Kept Praying'

Banker, a native New Yorker, survives Mumbai terrorist attack

By CLAUDIA McDONNELL

Maybe it's because Peter O'Malley is from New York, where moving fast is a skill that's learned early. Maybe it's because he can recognize the sound of an AK-47 assault rifle quickly enough to get out of the line of fire. Or maybe, because he takes his Catholic faith seriously, his prayers were answered even when the situation looked desperate.

No doubt that's the answer he'd choose to explain why he survived the deadly terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India, in early December, although he'd give all the credit to God and not to himself. A few minutes one way or the other, and he might not have been around to talk about the experience with CNY, which he did by phone from Hong Kong, where he lives with his wife and three children.

O'Malley, 41, was born in the Bronx and grew up in Pearl River, where he belonged to St. Aedan's parish. He's now a managing director for Deutsche Bank, specializing in natural resources investment banking. He regularly travels internationally on business, and he was in Mumbai with an associate on Dec. 7, a Sunday. At 10 p.m. the two men were in the hotel lobby checking out en route to the airport for a flight at 1:50 a.m.

O'Malley said that while standing in the lobby he heard a bang and recognized it from his days in South Africa. He said to Eugene (whose surname he withheld), "That's an AK—run!"

They headed for an exit as terrorists ran into the lobby from various entry points. Eugene was shot in the hip; though unable to escape, he survived. O'Malley unknowingly sprinted past the gunman who shot Eugene and made it out the doors to the hotel pool area. He hid in some bushes and listened as single gunshots rang out.

"I thought, These guys are pros, they're conserving ammo," he told CNY. Realizing that he could easily be spotted and shot, he scanned the area for an escape. It was surrounded by 12-foot walls, he said, but after a couple of tries and a prayer to the Holy Spirit, O'Malley—who stands 6 feet 5 inches—scaled a wall and dropped onto the roof of a pool shed. He lay there, partly covered by trees, and e-mailed colleagues in London from his cell phone. Then he turned it off, lest it ring and reveal his location. He prayed a favorite prayer: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle..." He said the Rosary over and over.

In an account that he wrote later, he said, "I knew if I was to get through this, it would be Our Lord's doing."He told CNY that he ran through a series of thoughts and emotions, "from disbelief to absolute mortal fear to anger" to a kind of resignation that he was about to die.

"I was thinking, 'Thy will be done,' " he said. Then he mused that saying those words might indicate that he was giving up. "So I hedged," he continued. "I prayed, 'I'm going to give this to Our Lady, and she's going to decide what will happen.' "

Time passed, and then O'Malley noticed busboys sneaking people out of the pool area through a trap door. He nearly leaped from his perch, but stopped himself when he realized he was 25 feet off the ground. Somehow he managed to hang on and then shimmy down a water pipe. He then slipped through the trap-door opening and was led by a circuitous route to a room in the hotel's second-floor business center. He wrote that the scene was "surreal," with some people crying, some close to panic and others sipping tea while the terrorists' AKs, grenades and bombs periodically punctuated the silence.

"These guys were diabolic," O'Malley told CNY. He began scoping out the area the way he gauged potential openings on a football field in high school—"if I hear them coming down hallway A, I'm heading for doorway B."

"I kept praying all the time," he said. Meanwhile, a friend was texting him from Mumbai. O'Malley, who must have a gift for understatement, texted back that he was having trouble concentrating on his prayers. The friend responded by texting the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary as he and O'Malley prayed together.

"It was a great comfort," O'Malley said.

He e-mailed his wife, parents, brother and sister. He composed a farewell message for his three young sons in which he told them to love their mother, love the Virgin Mary, serve the Church and "don't be afraid to discern a vocation." He said he also told them, "Live life to the fullest but stay in a state of grace."

He continued praying to St. Joseph and to Mary, and he told CNY, "I had the feeling Our Lady put her shawl over me." He wondered, "Is she protecting me, or is she getting ready to take me to her Son?"

Eventually, the hotel busboys announced that they were going to allow some people to exit down a stairway. There was a rush for the door, and the busboys announced, "Women and children first!" Some of the men asked to accompany their families, and in a few minutes O'Malley was able to leave also.

"The room was attacked five minutes after I left," he said. He praised hotel staff members for the way they protected guests, and noted that many of them died trying to save others.

Outside, O'Malley walked away from the hotel and down an avenue. Other survivors were milling around, he said, and a bus took them to another Taj hotel at about 6:30 a.m. When he arrived he called his wife, who knew nothing of what had happened. In another flash of understatement, he said that she was "pretty relieved." That night he caught a plane home.

O'Malley said that some people have asked him whether he's seen a therapist for help in recovering from the trauma.

"The only therapy I have is a half-hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament every day," he said.

"In human terms, I knew I didn't want to die," he said, "but I had some degree of confidence that I was in a pretty good state to meet my judgment." He quickly added that he didn't want to sound presumptuous, and that he'd said an Act of Contrition while lying atop the pool shed.

O'Malley traces his spirituality to his father, Brendan, who brought him to Mass on Sundays when he was a boy. Mass was celebrated in the parish gymnasium, with folding chairs for seating but no kneelers. Brendan O'Malley knelt anyway. That impressed young Peter O'Malley, who told CNY that it made him want to explore more deeply the faith that obviously meant so much to his father.

Peter O'Malley attended Siena College, where his connection to the Church grew stronger. "Everyone there seemed to take the faith seriously," he noted.

He said he is "supremely convinced" that the Catholic Church possesses "the fullness of truth." On business trips, he can't understand why anyone would tuck into a novel on an 11-hour flight. O'Malley prefers to pull out a papal encyclical or a book like Pope Benedict XVI's "Jesus of Nazareth."

O'Malley wrote that his ordeal at the Taj showed that anything can be overcome through prayer and firm faith in God's plan. He also wants to give something back, spiritually, for the grace of having been spared. The thought that is running through his mind now, he said, is "From him to whom much is given, much is expected."

"I don't want my life to go back to what it was," he said.