Dramatic new footage has emerged showing an elderly couple who were killed in the Bondi Beach shooting attempt to stop and disarm one of the gunmen.
The dashcam video, which was shared on social media Tuesday and verified by NBC News, shows a man and a woman wrestling with and ultimately disarming a man on the side of the road.
The couple were identified as Boris and Sofia Gurman, both in their sixties, by their family.
It’s the latest act of heroism to emerge from the attack, in which a father and son killed 15 people at a Hanukkah event at the famous site in Sydney, Australia. Praise has poured in for Ahmed al Ahmed, a bystander seen disarming a gunman in separate video, who underwent surgery for gunshot wounds and was visited Tuesday by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
In the video, which was first posted on Chinese social media platform RedNote, an older man wearing shorts and a lavender shirt can be seen wrestling with a gun-wielding man in white pants and a black t-shirt behind a silver car with an open door. He manages to take the long-barreled weapon as they both fall to the ground.
As the footage moves on, an older woman can be seen running around the car, which has a black flag with white writing draped across its windscreen.
Two homemade ISIS flags were found in the cars belonging to the younger, 24-year-old suspect, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said.
The video then shows the man in lavender getting up while holding the weapon and taking a few steps toward the man he had wrestled with. As the footage ends, the older man appears to fall to the ground.
“My dashcam accidentally captured this shocking scene,” the user who posted the video, and told NBC News she wanted to go by the name Jenny, said in the caption to her post.
“One terrorist on the bridge fired the first shot, then the second, then the third. Meanwhile, the other terrorist had just gotten out of the car when an elderly man by the roadside didn’t run away. Instead, he charged toward danger, fought desperately to grab the gun, and held on tightly! Watching through the lens as the old man was finally shot and fell to the ground — my heart was torn apart,” she said.
Separate drone footage showed the couple subsequently lying motionless beside each other near to the pedestrian bridge where the suspects were shot by police.
“Boris and Sofia were longtime Bondi locals who loved their community and the life they had built there,” the family said in a statement to ABC Australia, the national broadcaster.
“They were people of deep kindness, quiet strength, and unwavering care for others. Devoted to their family and to each other, their absence has left a void that cannot be filled,” the statement said.
The family said that the couple’s selfless act reflected “exactly who they were: people who instinctively chose to help, even at great personal risk.”
The statement added: “While nothing can lessen the pain of this loss, we feel immense pride in their courage and humanity.”
