Dramatic video has emerged showing an elderly couple who were killed in the Bondi Beach shooting trying 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.
Their family identified the couple as Boris and Sofia Gurman, both in their 60s.
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. 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 the Chinese social media platform RedNote, an older man wearing shorts and a lavender shirt wrestles 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 fall to the ground.
As the video moves on, an older woman runs around the car, which has a black flag with white writing draped across its windshield.
Two homemade Islamic State 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 video ends, the older man appears to fall to the ground.
“My dashcam accidentally captured this shocking scene,” the user who posted the video, who 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 video showed the couple subsequently lying motionless beside each other near the pedestrian bridge where police shot the gunmen.
“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.
The family said the couple’s selfless act reflected “exactly who they were: people who instinctively chose to help, even at great personal risk.”
“While nothing can lessen the pain of this loss, we feel immense pride in their courage and humanity,” it added.
The Gurmans' story emerged as al-Ahmed, who was seen on video rushing a shooter from behind and wrestling the weapon away, was recovering at Saint George Hospital in Sydney.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed al-Ahmed, 43, a shop owner, for his heroism as he visited the hospital Tuesday. "Your heart is very strong," Albanese said as he shook al-Ahmed's hand at his bedside.
“He is a true Australian hero,” Albanese said later, adding: “We are a brave country. Ahmed al-Ahmed represents the best of our country. We will not allow this country to be divided.”
Al-Ahmed's father, Mohammad Fatih al-Ahmed, told NBC News the family “know what it means to lose loved ones.”
“We have seen all kinds of crime and injustice in Syria, so Ahmed had to intervene when he saw the right opportunity,” his father said in an interview.
Mohammad Fatih al-Ahmed, who said his family left Syria two months ago and obtained three-month visitor visas for Australia, added that he felt very proud after he learned that President Donald Trump had called his son a "very brave person" who "saved a lot of lives."
An online fundraising campaign to support the family, organized through GoFundMe, has raised more than $1.3 million.
And flowers were laid Tuesday in front of al-Ahmed's tobacco shop in Sutherland, a Sydney suburb, according to the Reuters news agency.
Other tales of heroism were emerging, too.
Reuven Morrison, 62, was killed when he physically confronted one of the gunmen, according to his daughter, Sheina Gutnick.
“He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist,” she told CBS News.
“I believe after Ahmed managed to get the gun off the terrorist, my father had then gone to try and unjam the gun, to try and attempt shooting. He was screaming at the terrorist,” she said.
“There was no other way he would be taken from us. He went down fighting, protecting the people he loved most,” Gutnick added.
