A man who raced towards the sound of gunfire during the Bondi Beach terror attack has described how he joined others in stamping on the head of a downed shooter, an act he says felt "pretty well deserved" given the horrific scene.
From Evening Swim to War Zone
Jacob Barnfield was relaxing on the rocks at North Bondi after a swim last Sunday evening when he first heard what he mistook for fireworks. The reality soon became terrifyingly clear. "At first, I thought they were fireworks, but then as they kept continuously coming and overlapping each other, I realised, oh, there's multiple gunshots," Mr Barnfield told 7 News Australia. "Then you started hearing screams, and then people running over the crowd barriers and that's when I realised 'oh s***, it's pretty serious'."
Instead of fleeing, Barnfield made the split-second decision to run towards the danger, driven by a desperate hope of disarming the attacker. "I started running closer towards it to see what was going on, get a closer look," he recalled. The scene that unfolded was one of carnage. "As you got closer, you started seeing bodies on the floor, some dead, some being attended to by people, and it was just kind of like a war zone."
A Frantic Attempt to Help
Ducking and weaving through stationary cars, Barnfield tried to close the distance on the gunman. "I was trying to get closer to him to disarm him but someone got there before me, thank God," he said. That individual was shot multiple times just metres ahead of him. The closer Barnfield got, the more gruesome the details became. "The closer you got to the shooters, the more bodies you saw on the floor, there were just body parts on the floor next to the bodies, it was ugly, very ugly."
After police officers shot the attackers, a wave of bystanders, including Barnfield, surged forward. In the chaotic aftermath, he and a police officer initially tackled a man they feared was a third shooter, only to discover he was a civilian who had taken a gun from the assailants.
Anger Fuels a Final Act
The group then turned on the downed gunmen. Barnfield admits to delivering a "pretty good dog shot" – a stamp – to the head of the 24-year-old shooter, Naveed Akram, while barefoot. He explained the fury that propelled him: "I think that's why I just wanted to get closer and closer, I had so much anger built up... you've seen all the dead bodies, you've seen all the families screaming, crying, there was children on the floor screaming and crying, it was just a nightmare."
When a reporter told him, "You've just done what every Australian wanted to do," Barnfield agreed. "Yeah. Glad I did it. It was a bit of a dog shot but I don't regret it at all. He deserved every bit of it."
The attack, which police have linked to ISIS, claimed 15 lives at a Hanukkah event. Victims include 10-year-old Matilda, British-born Rabbi Eli Schlanger, 41, and Holocaust survivor Alexander Kleytman. The gunmen have been named as Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed, 24.
