A Jewish Australian mother who survived the Bondi Beach terror attack told how she had to run for her life in high heels with her daughter to escape the deadly shooting.
Lissy Abrahams, 57, and her daughter, 23, had been at the sands on Sunday to celebrate a 13-year-old boy’s Bar Mitzvah on the beach.
As they walked through Archer Park, next to the beach, Lissy’s daughter pointed out that a group of people were lighting candles on a Hanukkiah in celebration of Hanukkah.
‘Straight after she said that, I heard gunshots’, she told the Daily Mail.
‘I knew, I just knew. It was a particular rhythm, it kind of went bang… bang and then a double bang again.
‘It was something about it, I’ve heard it before. A lot of Jews have seen footage of October 7 and beyond and so we’ve heard it.
‘The rhythm of terror.’
Lissy Abrahams had to run for her life in high heels with her daughter as the massacre at Bondi Beach occurred ten metres from them
Alleged Bondi shooter named as Naveed Akram, 24, opened fire on the Hannukah celebrations 10 metres from Lissy and her daughter
Thousands of people ran from the gunshots, as well as Lissy in her high heels with her daughter
The gunmen were just 10 or 20 metres away from Lissy, a therapist who previously lived in London during the 7/7 bombings, she told the Daily Mail.
Confusion quickly set in, people not knowing whether the bangs were fireworks or some sort of attack.
As those sounds from distant terror attacks suddenly became real and rang in her ears, Lissy sprang into action.
Immediately thinking of protecting her daughter, she told her ‘Just run. Get running, we started running together.
‘I had high heeled shoes on, I can run but the shoes were slowing me down.
‘I had to make a decision about whether I stopped to take my shoes off so I could run faster, or just keep running, because if I stopped I was really worried that I might be killed.
‘We didn’t know how many gunmen there were or where they were – if it was restricted to just the park. I had no idea.’
‘We didn’t know how many gunmen there were or where they were – if it was restricted to just the park. I had no idea,’ Lissy said
15 people were killed in the attack including a 10-year-old girl, a British-born rabbi, a retired police officer, and a Holocaust survivor
She decided she would keep her shoes on and run for her life because she thought ‘it was really dangerous to stop’.
Meanwhile, her young daughter had flat shoes on so was able to get away quicker.
In a terrible moment, fearing for her daughter’s life, Lissy yelled out to her, ‘Just run and run to safety and keep running. Just go. I’ll be there, I’ll get there behind you.
‘She said “I can’t leave you” and we just looked at each other and I said “You have to go”‘.
Her daughter refused to leave her mum behind in the chaos and stayed with her, both running together in the open along the promenade until they reached a concrete storage unit below a lifeguard hut on the beach.
There were around 40 or 50 people in the unit, huddling for safety.
‘There were dogs and babies and people looked very confused.’
Reading the situation, Lissy quickly took control and told the people ‘This is a terrorist attack, and we all need to be very careful.’
Lissy and her daughter took cover below this lifeguard hut underneath which are storage units
Lissy took control and made sure the doors to the units were rolled shut to keep the group from being exposed
‘I knew I had a daughter to protect and look after and that whatever happened I needed to honour her journey at that point’
There were rolling garage doors at the front of the storage unit, and she decided that these should be closed in order to shelter from the attackers and keep everyone less exposed.
She suggested this to the group, and one person protested.
She responded firmly ‘You’re going to have to make a decision about whether you stay in here with the doors shut or you leave and take the risk of running out there’.
The doors were promptly shut and Lissy’s daughter phoned the police.
They were waiting, terrified in this unit for a good 15 or 20 minutes and during this agonising wait, more life and death decisions were made by the pair.
Her daughter wanted to go right to the back of the unit and hide, while Lissy favoured the front as a potential escape route.
She said, tearfully, that it ‘felt really important’ to respect her daughter’s survival response in the life or death situation.
‘I knew I had a daughter to protect and look after and that whatever happened I needed to honour her journey at that point’.
Floral tributes were laid all over the beach the next morning to commemorate the 15 people who were killed
While waiting, Lissy was reminded of Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi’s book about his time as a prisoner in Hamas’ underground tunnels for 491 days, saying his advice about ‘how you’ve always got choices’ helped keep her head.
The shooting stopped after a while.
In the meantime 15 people, including a 10 year old girl, had been shot dead.
An official came knocking on the storage unit door to let them out.
‘At first I was very mistrusting of that, but had to go with it, because there was nothing else. There was no point staying.
‘We stood in the doorway and listened, and there were no more shots.
‘When they opened the door my daughter and I absolutely bolted out along the beach.
‘It wasn’t over – there were emergency services everywhere – there were helicopters, there were ambulances, all the sirens going off.
‘It was terrifying’.
‘It wasn’t over – there were emergency services everywhere – there were helicopters, there were ambulances, all the sirens going off’
They had to get away from the area and Lissy daughter had the idea of getting a ride with someone in a car so they made their way up to a nearby main road and flagged someone down.
‘Our minds worked really well together as we ran,’ Lissy reflected on her daughter’s actions.
She added, ‘You learn very quickly that you’ll take a bullet for your child’.
Her daughter’s presence ‘helped’ Lissy, because she said ‘it gave me a role’.
Speaking to her later about the attack, she told her daughter that their ancestors ‘come from resilient stock’.
‘Jews have been doing this for 3,000 years. It doesn’t excuse it. It doesn’t make it okay. But our story is one that we know this [terror], but it’s never okay.’
‘There is something that is really awful about that story, but it is also innate [to Jews].
‘So, for me putting on a brave face, being brave, I think it’s part of our story.
‘Because we have to teach them [their children] their survival strategy in the future.’
The pair were taken away from the scene in the back of a pickup truck, shouting at passers by to stay away from the beach, warning them of the attack.
When they finally got home they locked all the doors and switched off all the lights except the room they were in ‘and felt really scared’.
They watched the news and told loved ones they were safe but would be interrupted by ‘these waves of tears’ which just ‘kept coming and coming in this disbelief, watching it on TV and thinking “How were we there?”‘
Lissy humbly said that her and her daughter’s experience was ‘part of a very big story’ and that ‘we weren’t heroes’ despite her decisive action in the storage unit.
Hero couple Boris Gurman, 69, and his wife Sofia, 61, were killed after trying to stop the gunmen, tackling and disarming one
Ahmed al Ahmed heroically disarmed one of the gunmen during the attack but was injured by the shooter
‘We’re terror survivors but we’re not victims,’ she said.
‘There are real victims and they’re going to be buried.
‘There’s a 10-year-old girl who will never get to go to the beach again, and she doesn’t get to have her birthdays and sunshine and all of what she deserved.’
Lissy said that there were systemic problems in Australian and global politics currently which contributed to the beginning of the attack.
She said: ‘I’ve been very concerned about the rise [of antisemitism] since October 7.
‘The world changed, and being Jewish has meant that it’s been on my agenda, and for Jews across the world.
‘We have been looking at a lot of social media, trying to understand what’s happened to the world, why the media has often felt so biased, why institutions have turned.’
She summarised: ‘Being in it [a terror attack] one way is shocking because it’s a situation you just can’t imagine you’re going to be in, but on the other hand its not surprising because we’ve been warning the prime minister, we’ve been warning institutions, we’ve been warning people that this was going to happen.
‘We’ve been telling them that people are going to get killed. And this is exactly what happened on Sunday night.’
As a lasting message Lissy said: ‘I want this experience to be used to galvanise the country.
‘To help stop our country dividing – we’ve had so much division and we’ve seen this around the world.
‘This is not about turning on Muslims – they are our brothers and cousins and sisters and that is not what this is about for me.
‘I want to see much more social cohesion.’
15 people were killed in the attack, including a 10-year-old girl, a British-born rabbi, a retired police officer, and a Holocaust survivor.
The gunmen in the attack were Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, police have alleged and are believed to be inspired by Islamic terror group ISIS after the group’s flag was found in their car.
Sajid was killed in a fire fight with police at the scene while Naveed is in hospital with critical injuries, waking up from a coma today.
Sajid entered Australia from India in 1998 on a student visa, Home minister Tony Burke said, which was later transferred into a partner visa and later resident return visas.
He was a licensed firearms holder of six guns, all of which were used in the attack.
His son Naveed was born in Australia and is a citizen.