Youngest Bondi Beach shooting victim mourns as Texas rabbi recovers from wounds suffered trying to help

Sydney — Hundreds of people gathered in Sydney on Thursday to mourn the youngest victim of the terrorist attack which targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach. The 10-year-old girl, who has been publicly identified only as Matilda, has become a symbol of the country’s grief over the 15 people killed by two gunmen.

Dozens more people were wounded in the shooting, including American Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, a 20-year-old whom News themezone found holding a menorah in his hospital bed on Thursday while being treated for gunshot wounds to the stomach and thighs.

Leibel was volunteering at the event to commemorate the first day of Hanukkah when gunshots were heard. Meanwhile, his parents were sleeping at their home in Texas.

“In the middle of the night, someone came to our door to tell us that there had been a terrorist attack and that Leibel was… people knew he had been shot, but they didn’t know what had happened to him,” his mother Manya told News themezone on Thursday. “At that time, we didn’t know if he was alive or what his condition was.”

It was a couple of hours before they knew he was alive, but had been shot several times.

“We immediately tried to find a way to get here,” said his father, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff.

After flying halfway around the world, they were at their son’s bedside in a Sydney hospital, where he told them his story.

Leibel told his parents that after the shooting started, he heard a police officer yell that they had been shot, so he ran and took off his shirt to use as a tourniquet. Trained in how to use a gun, he told his father that he asked the officer to hand him his firearm so he could try to shoot the gunmen.

“While he was doing that, Leibel himself was shot,” his father told News themezone.

“Actually, I wasn’t surprised,” his mother said. “He’s a firecracker. He’s a quick thinker. He’s someone brave, strong, a fighter, a very fighter and someone who thinks very quickly.”.“

The young American rabbi, whose parents run the Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M University, was in Sydney to intern with Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was buried Wednesday at the first of the funerals for the 15 victims of the attack.

“He saw Rabbi Eli get shot, and Rabbi Eli was his mentor,” Leibel’s father told News themezone. “He said, ‘I wish I could have done more.'”

Four days after the attack and after two surgeries, Lazaroff was battling an infection Thursday and his parents know he still faces a difficult recovery.

“He’s still in critical condition,” his mother said. “He has a way to go. There are still more surgeries.”

His parents also wanted to send a message to leaders around the world: that the attack on Bondi Beach “has to be a wake-up call.”

“hate speech “It’s not just freedom of expression,” Manya said. “It leads to terrible actions like this.”