“He said, ‘I’m going to die – please see my family [and tell them] that I went down to save people’s lives.'"
--Jozay Alkanj, who was having coffee with Ahmed when the shooting erupted.
In a world full of cowards, h* and grifters and bystanders, be an Ahmed al Ahmed. The courage and inner light of this man
How journalists covered a weekend of mass shootings across two continents
Coverage of the Bondi Beach and Brown University attacks grappled with terror, trauma and accountability
Hero who wrestled gun from terrorist says he’d do it again despite being ‘riddled with bullets’
Ahmed al Ahmed, the hero bystander who tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi shooters on Sunday, has said that despite the immense pain he is in, he does not regret lunging at the gunman. In fact, he would do it again.
“He doesn’t regret what he did. He said he’d do it again. But the pain has started to take a toll on him,” Sam Issa, Ahmed’s migration lawyer, said on Monday night after visiting him.
“He’s not well at all. He’s riddled with bullets. Our hero is struggling at the moment.”
As Ahmed recovers from his first round of surgery at St George Hospital in Kogarah, Issa fears he will lose his left arm.
Ahmed, according to Issa, sustained about five bullet wounds that were sprayed across his left arm, but one that plunged into the back of his left shoulder blade, which he called “weird”, has yet to be extracted.
A hero bystander wrestled a rifle off a gunman in a moment of bravery that may have saved lives, footage from the scene at Bondi Beach shows.
“He’s a lot worse than expected. When you think of a bullet in the arm, you don’t think of serious injuries, but he has lost a lot of blood,” he said.
After being granted citizenship in 2022, Ahmed feels “indebted” to the Australian community, Issa said.
“Ahmed’s a humble man, he’s not interested in coverage, he just did what he was compelled to do as a human being on that day,” he said. “He gets that gratitude from being in Australia. This is his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship.
“He has really appreciated this community, and he felt that as a member of the community, he had to act that way and contribute.”
Earlier on Monday, Ahmed’s father Fateh and mother Malaka said their son was in “good spirits”.
“He said he thanks God that he was able to do this, to help innocent people and to save people from these monsters, these killers,” his father said.
Ahmed’s mother said she could not stop crying when she found out her son saved lives.
US President Donald Trump has also praised Ahmed’s heroics.
“In Australia, as you’ve probably read, there’s been a very, very brave person who went and attacked frontally one of the shooters,” Trump said. “[He] saved a lot of lives, a very brave person who is right now in the hospital, pretty seriously wounded.
“I have great respect for the man who did that.”
Ahmed, a Muslim, arrived in Australia in 2006 from Syria. The 44-year-old tobacco shop owner is the father of two daughters aged five and six.
Mostafa, Ahmed’s cousin, who did not provide a last name, said he had not slept since he arrived at the hospital on Sunday night. He said his cousin was undoubtedly a hero, but was still in some pain.
“Absolutely, he is a hero,” he said. “He would’ve lost his life to save other people.
“I hope everyone in Australia wishes [that everything goes well for] Ahmed and that he can get back to his family.”
Ahmed told Mostafa he did not know what came over him in the moment, but that God had given him “power that he never gave me before”.
When Laurie Antoniadis realised the man who tackled the shooter was his local tobacconist, he headed to Ahmed’s store.
“I thought I would come over and say thank you to him,” Antoniadis said. “He is a wonderful man.”
Ahmed’s shop was closed on Monday. “I thought it was a very brave act that he did,” Antoniadis said.
Ahmed was in Bondi on Sunday, having a coffee with his cousin, Jozay Alkanj.
“He said, ‘I’m going to die – please see my family [and tell them] that I went down to save people’s lives’,” Alkanj recounted, before Ahmed tackled the shooter, taking his rifle.
Issa recounted the struggles his client had in gaining Australian citizenship after escaping the civil war in Syria.
“They weren’t going to give it to him, but we appealed all the way to the Federal Circuit Court. He’s a very good man,” Issa said.
“Not all immigrants are bad. He makes a great citizen, and he has worked very hard.”
Issa said Ahmed’s elderly parents were in Australia and could not return to Syria because of the situation there. He said he would push for them to be granted citizenship “as a reward for their son’s service to the community, saving scores of lives”.
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“This is an opportunity for the PM to do something good as a reward for his bravery,” he said.
In 2019, Home Affairs had refused his bid for citizenship after NSW Police had earlier charged him with possession of goods suspected of being stolen, which he denied.
He appealed the citizenship refusal, but the Administrative Appeals Tribunal dismissed his application for a merits review on the basis that he had no reasonable chance of success.
However, court records show the charges relating to possession of suspected stolen goods were later dropped in August 2019. He was eventually granted citizenship in 2022.
Records also show that in 2022 he pleaded guilty to a number of minor tobacco offences, including displaying an ice pipe in a shop. He was sentenced to a conditional release order for 12 months.
Ahmed was also found guilty of possessing a prohibited weapon – namely a knife – a year later, but no conviction was recorded.
On Monday morning, outside St George Hospital, Alkanj recalled the incident that left his cousin with two gunshot wounds in the upper left shoulder.
The cousins passed by the Hanukkah event and were offered food. They declined the offer.
“We needed a coffee,” Alkanj said. “It was then just 10 minutes before this happened like that. It was very crazy – we went behind the cars, we were seeing that people were shooting very near to us.”
More than 5700 people have raised more than $570,000 for Ahmed on crowdfunding site GoFundMe set up by CarHub Australia. Among donors is US billionaire Bill Ackman, who gave $100,000.
The footage from the scene at Bondi Beach shows one of the gunmen, dressed in a black shirt and white pants, holding a black bag and standing beside two bins next to the Campbell Parade car park as he fires into the crowd gathered on the lawn nearby.
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Ahmed moved towards the gunman through the car park, tackling him and disarming him.
The shooter then backs away, walking towards the car park overpass, where the other shooter was still stationed.
Ahmed places the rifle against a tree and backs away. Another bystander can be seen chasing after the gunman, throwing something at him as he walks towards the bridge.
Other footage from the scene shows the gunman then rejoins the other assailant at the bridge. Having entered the line of fire at great personal risk to save lives, Ahmed was then shot twice.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns commended his bravery.
“We have seen Australians today run towards danger in order to help others. These Australians are heroes and their bravery has saved lives,” Albanese said at a press conference.
In a separate press conference, Minns remarked on the “extraordinary acts of personal courage and bravery from individuals in our community”.
“I think it’s worth remembering that in all of this evil, in all of this sadness, there are still wonderful, brave Australians that are prepared to risk their lives to help a complete stranger.”
More coverage on the Bondi terror attack
- Updates: Sydney on high alert for further terrorist acts as multiple people killed
- What we know so far: All the details of the mass shooting
- How the world reacted: Global leaders condemn ‘deeply distressing’ attack
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