Bondi Junction resident Marcos Carvalho (38) was just getting ready to head for home from an afternoon at the beach and was fetching his flip-flops when the sound of gunshots rang out.
“We all panicked and started running as well. So we left everything behind, like flip-flops, everything. We just ran through the hill,” he said. “I must have heard, I don’t know, maybe, like, 40, 50 shots.”
Eyewitnesses described having nowhere to go and feeling confused during the shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday evening.
At least 12 people were killed, authorities said, including a man police said was one of the gunmen. More than two dozen others have been transferred to hospitals in the area.
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Australian law enforcement authorities declared the shooting a terrorist attack and said the gunmen were targeting Jews.
Restaurant worker William Doliente Petty said he was serving someone when he heard the gunshots close by.
“The whole shop just stood up and we ran into the back exit,” he said.
Olivia Matis had been out for a run in the evening along the Bondi Beach promenade.
“I was just walking outside the pavilion and I ran into a friend and I heard the most deafening sounds. I thought they must be fireworks or something, and then I could see people crouching down and then people said ‘run’,” she said.
“There was just shots, shots, shots and I thought no way there’s a shooter but I ran and just sprinted.
[ Bystander who tackled armed man at Bondi Beach shooting hailed as heroOpens in new window ]
“A friend ran past and said there’s a shooter and I just kept running to my apartment at north Bondi. We just hid. She said she thought there were about 50 shots.”
Sergi Cánovas, who had just left Bondi Beach with his family, described “very continuous shooting” – and saw people starting to run.
Eating at a nearby sushi restaurant, they hid under the table.
As the shots continued, they crawled through the kitchen to a backyard with a group of people.
“A ... very nice lady, she opened the door of her house,” he said. “We went all inside and then we just put all the shutters down and just wait there.”
Jesse Lockhart-Krause, a Bondi local and volunteer surf lifesaver who was in the area to pick up his girlfriend who is also a volunteer surf lifesaver, described the scene as “mayhem”.
“I was driving to pick her up from the surf club. I thought there were fireworks but I could see birds flying away.
“Then I saw a group of people running towards the car. I realised it wasn’t fireworks. It was mayhem with people jumping out of their cars. It was still daylight. It was a beautiful day today.”
He said the shooting occurred in the vicinity of a car park behind a children’s play area that was next to the surf pavilion.
Several volunteers from the surf life-saving club had reacted after the shots were fired to take emergency equipment including oxygen and defibrillators to the scene.
“There were several that had the courage to get into the park and start helping people. It was all surreal. It is my back yard down there and it feels wrong. It is concerning that this can happen in the community.”
A Guardian reporter, Emma Elsworthy, was walking up Francis Street with groceries in hand, when what sounded like fireworks began crackling through the daylight.
“My first thought was that it was an odd choice to let them off when the sky was still so bright blue – or had it been an accident, a night-time event that went early?” she says.
“It sounded like dozens of crackers. People stood on their balconies with binoculars. I’d been for a swim down at Bondi Beach 20 minutes earlier – the same place that police cars howling past me seemed to be headed. Some frazzled people walking up from the beach passed by me, talking over each other. The word ‘shooting’ was audible.” – Guardian and Reuters
