Dashcam footage emerged on Tuesday which shows a couple tackling and attempting to disarm one of the attackers in Sunday’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia on Sunday.
Boris Gurman, 69, and his wife Sofia Gurman, 61, both stepped in to try and protect others before themselves being shot, the family said in a statement.
“We are heartbroken by the sudden and senseless loss of our beloved Boris and Sofia Gurman,” the statement said.
Video of the incident taken by a passing car, shows Boris Gurman wrestling with one of the alleged gunmen and managing to get his weapon away from him before they both fall into the road.
Boris Gurman then appears to hit the suspected attacker with his gun, who then reportedly used another weapon to shoot and kill the couple.
“They had been married for 34 years, with their 35th wedding anniversary approaching in January. We were looking forward to celebrating Sofia’s 62nd birthday on Wednesday 17 December,” the family said.
The Gurmans, who were Jewish, were the first people killed in Sunday’s mass shooting, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.
Fifteen people were killed in the attack, which occurred around 6:45 pm local time on Sunday during a Hanukkah celebration attended by around 1,000 people.
It was the country’s worst mass shooting in nearly three decades.
Police have said that the two suspects were a father and son, Sajid and Naveed Akram. The 50-year-old father was killed by police at the scene, while the son, 24, is being treated in hospital.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said on Tuesday that the mass shooting was “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State.”
A news conference by political and law enforcement officials on Tuesday was the first time they confirmed their beliefs about the suspects’ ideologies.
Authorities probe suspects’ trip to Philippines
The suspects travelled to the Philippines last month, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state. The reasons for the trip and where in the Philippines they went would be probed by investigators, Lanyon said.
He also confirmed that a vehicle removed from the scene, registered to the younger suspect, contained improvised explosive devices.
“I also confirm that it contained two homemade IS flags,” Lanyon said.
The Philippines Bureau of Immigration confirmed on Tuesday that Sajid Akram travelled to the country from 1 to 28 November, along with his son, Naveed, with the city of Davao as their final destination.
Australian authorities have not named the younger suspect.
Groups of Muslim separatist militants, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, once expressed support for the so-called Islamic State group and have hosted small numbers of foreign militant combatants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past.
Decades of military offensives, however, have considerably weakened Abu Sayyaf and other such armed groups and Philippine military and police officials say there has been no recent indication of any foreign militants in the country’s south.
Calls for stricter gun laws
Albanese and the leaders of some of Australia’s states have pledged to tighten the country’s already strict gun laws in what would be the most sweeping reforms since a shooter killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania in 1996. Mass shootings in Australia have since been rare.
Officials gave more information as public questions and anger grew on the third day following the attack about how the suspects were able to plan and enact it and whether Australian Jews had been sufficiently protected from rising antisemitism.
Albanese announced plans to further restrict access to guns, in part because it emerged the older suspect had amassed his cache of six weapons legally.
“The suspected murderers, callous in how they allegedly coordinated their attack, appeared to have no regard for the age or ableness of their victims,” said Barrett.
“It appears the alleged killers were interested only in a quest for a death tally.”