The daughter of one of the victims of the terror attack on Bondi Beach said Australia is no longer a safe place for Jewish people to call home.
Reuven Morrison, a 62-year-old member of Australia's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, was fatally shot while trying to stop one of the two assailants who opened fire on a crowd gathered Sunday to celebrate the Jewish festival of lights known as Hanukkah, his daughter, Sheina Gutnick, told CBS News.
"From my sources and understanding, he had jumped up the second the shooting started," Gutnick said Monday from Bondi. "He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist."
Her father attempted to stop one of the gunmen after Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old fruit vendor, rushed a suspect and managed to wrest the gun away from him.
"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," she said. "He was screaming at the terrorist."
"My dear father, Reuven Morrison, was shot dead for being Jewish at a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach while protecting lives, while jumping up, putting his own life at risk to save his fellow Jewish community members," Gutnick added.
Video posted online and verified by CBS shows Morrison throwing objects at one of the alleged attackers after a man — confirmed by Australian authorities as Ahmed – disarmed him.
Gutnick then recalled the moment she learned that her father had been killed in the shooting.
"As my family was exiting a Hanukkah event in Melbourne, we heard news from a friend that there was a shooting happening in Sydney," she said. "I immediately felt the biggest pit in my stomach and tried calling my father who did not pick up the phone."
"I then called my mother, and I heard screaming, shouting," Gutnick continued. "She was screaming that there's an active shooter.
"I called her back, and she was yelling that he's running, he's running, and then that he has been shot."
"After a few more attempts of hanging up and calling back, my mother was yelling for medical assistance, screaming for an ambulance, screaming for help, asking for help … she then advised that he's getting oxygen and hung up the phone," she said.
After getting her mother back on the phone, Gutnick said that "she was screaming that they had stopped working on him and that he had been covered by a sheet."
In the aftermath of the terror attack that claimed her father's life, Gutnick said she did not believe that Australia is a safe country for Jews.
"Australia's not a home for Jews anymore," she said. "It can't be.
"If we are shot dead while celebrating our religious Festival of Lights, of pride, of celebrating who we are, and if we can't do that, Australia is not a house for us anymore."
She pointed to a lack of preparedness on the part of the country's authorities, saying that Australian police officers, "lay on the ground in the grass covering their heads, untrained for this massacre, untrained for what's to come, untrained for what the Jewish community has been telling the Australian government is inevitable."
Her father fled the Soviet Union 50 years earlier to escape antisemitic persecution, Gutnick said, and she felt "betrayed by the government" for how he ultimately died.
"I feel the signs were coming for a long, long time," she said. "The warning bells were there, and the government sat doing nothing."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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