Acts of bravery as horror unfolded

When the bullets started flying on Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, strangers Wayne and Jessica found themselves in the same nightmare scenario. They were unable to find their three-year-old children.

In the chaos, separately, they desperately scanned the green. The people who had gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah screamed and fled. Others ran. Some didn’t get far.

The next ten minutes were the longest of their lives.

Wayne’s body served as a human shield for his eldest daughter, but his mind was elsewhere: with his missing daughter, Gigi.

“We had to wait that long for the gunfire to stop. It seemed like an eternity,” he told the BBC.

Unbeknownst to her, Jessica’s gaze had landed on a little girl in a rainbow skirt, confused, scared and alone, calling for her mom and dad.

She couldn’t protect her own child, so she would protect this one, she decided. She smothered Gigi’s body with her own and uttered, “I’ve got you,” over and over again. They could sense the moment when a woman about a meter away was shot.

By the time the air finally fell silent, Wayne was convinced Gigi was dead.

“I was looking among the blood and the bodies,” he said, increasingly moved.

“What I saw, no human should ever see.”

Finally, he caught sight of a familiar colorful skirt and found his daughter, stained red – but okay, still wrapped underneath Jessica. His son too would soon be found unharmed.

“She said she was just a mother and acted on her maternal instincts,” Wayne says.

“[But] she’s a superhero. We will be indebted to him for the rest of our lives. »

This is one of the incredible stories of selflessness and courage to emerge from one of Australia’s darkest days.

Declared a terrorist attack by the police, it was the deadliest attack in Australian history. Dozens of people were injured and 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed by the two armed men, inspired, according to police, by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

Without Ahmed al Ahmed, more people would undoubtedly have been injured.

A Syrian-Australian shop owner, he was having a coffee nearby when the massacre began. His father told the BBC Arabic that Ahmed “saw the victims, the blood, the women and children lying in the street, and then acted.”

Footage of the moment he jumped out from behind a car and snatched a gun from one of the attackers immediately went viral. He was shot several times and may lose his arm.

Another man, Reuven Morrison, was also seen on the video throwing objects at the same attacker moments after Ahmed disarmed him.

Sheina Gutnik easily recognized her father in the images.

“He’s not the type to lie down. He’s the type to run into danger,” Ms Gutnick told BBC News partner CBS News.

He had stood up as soon as the shooting began, she said, and was throwing bricks at one of the gunmen before being shot.

“He fought, protecting the people he loved most.”

The first two victims of the attack, Boris and Sofia Gurman, were also filmed on a dashboard camera, struggling with one of the men to retrieve his gun. When they succeeded, he retrieved another weapon from the car he had just gotten out of and killed them.

“While nothing can ease the pain of losing Boris and Sofia, we feel an immense sense of pride in their courage and selflessness,” the couple’s family said in a statement.

“It sums up who Boris and Sofia were: people who instinctively and selflessly tried to help others.”

The list is long.

Chaya, just 14 years old, was shot in the leg while shielding two young children from gunfire.

Jack Hibbert — a patrol cop just four months after he started — was shot in the head and shoulder, but continued to help festival attendees until he was physically no longer able, his family said. The 22-year-old survived, but with life-changing injuries.

Lifeguard Jackson Doolan was pictured sprinting from a nearby beach during the attack, armed with essential medical supplies. He didn’t even stop to put on his shoes.

Others in Bondi rushed from the beach toward the fire, their red and yellow rescue boards working overtime as stretchers. A lifeguard even dove back into the waves to save swimmers panicked by the shooting.

Student Levi Xu, 31, told the BBC he felt he could not scream for help because he did not want to draw attention to himself or risk potential rescuers being targeted.

But lifeguard Rory Davey saw him and his friend struggling and brought them back to shore.

“We got up and wanted to thank him, but he had already returned to the sea to save other people,” Xu said.

Thousands of Australians have flocked to donate blood, eclipsing the previous record.

Authorities say many off-duty first responders traveled to Bondi on Sunday — two hours away — simply because they knew there was a need.

Health workers rushed to hospitals when they heard about the attack, whether on duty or not, facing indescribable trauma to save lives.

“Normally on a Sunday evening there are staff available to run an operating room. [at St Vincent’s Hospital]. There were eight operating at the same time,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

State Premier Chris Minns was quick to also salute the heroism of ordinary Australians.

“This is a terrible, wanton act of destructive violence. But there are still extraordinary people we have in Australia, and they showed their true colors last night,” he said the day after the attack.

Wayne says he shudders to think what would have happened without people like Jessica and Ahmed.

When he speaks to the BBC, he has just attended the funeral of the gunmen’s youngest victim, 10-year-old Matilda.

“I was sitting at that funeral and I was just thinking, tears streaming from my eyes…I could have been in the front. Thank God I was in the back. That could have been my little girl.”

“There could have been much more devastation without the courage of [these] people… someone who could run has just arrived. Someone who might worry about their own child is caring for another child.

“This is what the world needs most.”

Additional reporting by Fan Wang.