Bondi Beach shooting: Neighbours say family of alleged gunmen kept to themselves
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Police officers outside the house of the suspects of a shooting at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, on Dec 15.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SYDNEY – Like many people in Sydney, Mr Glenn Nelson spent the evening of Dec 14 watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach
But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite – home of the two suspects
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning’; the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Dec 15, shortly after mowing his lawn.
Mr Nelson and other neighbours said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other people living in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36km by road from Sydney’s Central Business District.
Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of the dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.
Police said the son was known to the authorities and the father had a firearms licence.
The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Dec 14 evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.
She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip, before they headed to Bondi and opened fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Ms Lemanatua Fatu, 66, who lives across the street, said: “I always see the man and the woman and the son. They are normal people.”
Until the shooting on Dec 14, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighbourhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling western suburbs.
It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.
The town centre, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.
“It is a quiet area, very quiet,” Ms Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing – until now.”
Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.
A Facebook post from an Arabic and Quran studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Dec 15 and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighbouring suburb of Heckenberg.
On Dec 15 afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door. REUTERS
