Daily London
Bridget Sarks and her partner live around the corner from where the Hanukkah By The Sea religious celebration was taking place and told Today she actually saw the gunmen get out of their car and start shooting.
“My partner Tommy and I saw the perpetrator get out of the back left hand side of a car and for a split second, I felt sorry for him because I thought it was this man getting out of an Uber and I thought he was tripping over and going to pick up crutches,” she said.
“I just kind of thought, ‘oh, poor guy’ and then I looked closer and he just picks up this huge gun.”
Bridget said there were hundreds of families in the area and she and Tommy jumped back on the Vespa and rode down the street screaming for people to take cover.
“I’ve lost my voice but we’ve driven down the screaming for people to run, to get away and I thought if I was wrong, would I get in trouble for causing a scene, but if I was right, I had to tell people to run.”
Bridget and Tommy were on their way to her brother’s house nearby to where the attack took place and witnessed one of the shooters start firing on the hundreds of families and members of Sydney’s Jewish community, who were celebrating the first day of Hanukkah and the iconic Australian beach.
“There were kids screaming and blood everywhere, it was really horrible,” Bridget told Today, wiping tears from her eyes.
Bridget and Tommy had pulled up behind the gunman’s car, on their Vespa and were just metres from one of the gunmen when he opened fire.
“He was in the white pants and I’ve never seen a gun like that in my life,” she said.
Like so many locals who took cover in their homes and resorted to TV and radio and social media to find out exactly what was happening, as it all unfolded, Bridget and Tommy got to her brother’s place and couldn’t believe what they were watching.
“I was just in tears and we were googling Bondi and nothing was coming up, but finally it rolled on the news and I just, it was just unbelievable,” she said.
