Minutes later it would be all over, the pretty 25-year-old stoned to death by her own family — her father, brothers and cousins — as police and passers-by impassively watched a murder that has appalled the rest of the world.
Farzana Iqbal's 'offence' is impossible to understand for anyone living outside the medieval society that still exists in many of the poorer parts of South Asia and the Middle East.
Three-months pregnant, she had come with her husband Mohammad to Lahore — supposedly Pakistan's most civilised city — to pursue what would appear an innocent legal suit: to convince a judge she'd wed for love and not, as her family alleged, because she'd been kidnapped and coerced into marriage.
But she was to die for that love at the hands of relatives thirsting for revenge because she had defied them by marrying a man she had chosen — rather than the cousin her father had intended for her.
And in an appalling twist to this devastating tale of female subjugation, we discovered this week that Mohammad, the husband she chose, has his own dark secret: he strangled his first wife so that he could marry Farzana and escaped retribution for her murder.
Farzana and Mohammad Iqbal had arrived early on Tuesday morning this week for what would have been their third court appearance to challenge her family's claim that he had kidnapped Farzana.
Having been confronted by her relatives before another court appearance weeks earlier, they were taking no chances. Accompanied by a group of seven friends and relatives as protection, they arrived in a convoy of three cars.
But, as a devastated Mohammad told us from his home village in the Punjab district of Jaranwala, even those precautions weren't enough. For close to the gates, they were ambushed by around 20 members of Farzana's family who had been waiting for them. Many had heavy sticks and one cousin had a pistol.
As gunshots rang out, the Iqbals' friends scattered and the couple found themselves surrounded by a mob that included her father, two brothers, two male cousins (one of whom was her former fiancé) and two female cousins.
At the earlier confrontation, on May 12, the Iqbals were rescued by police officers. But this time, says Mr Iqbal, 45, her family had brought along Farzana's step-brother, a police constable named Ghulam Ali.
The constable's presence, Mr Iqbal insists, explains why on this occasion the police did nothing to avert catastrophe.
Rejecting her family's demands to leave with them, Farzana tried to run off. The man with the gun tried to shoot her, then grabbed her headscarf, making her trip and fall over.
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