Verena Akram, the mother of 24-year-old suspected Bondi gunman Naveed Akram, said she didn’t believe her son could be involved in the attack on Sydney’s Jewish community on Sunday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“He doesn’t have a firearm. He doesn’t even go out. He doesn’t mix around with friends. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t go to bad places … he goes to work, he comes home, he goes to exercise and that’s it,” she claimed.
Naveed and his father, Sajid, who had recently returned from a trip to the Philippines, told the family that they had gone on a fishing trip to the Aussie coast, she claimed.
“He rings me up [on Sunday] and said, ‘Mum, I just went for a swim. I went scuba diving. We’re going … to eat now, and then this morning, and we’re going to stay home now because it’s very hot,'” Verena recounted.
Despite police finding explosive devices and an Islamic State flag in their car, Verena maintained that her son was innocent and that she couldn’t identify her son in photos of the shooting.
“Anyone would wish to have a son like my son … he’s a good boy,” she asserted.
Bondi attack shooters
Naveed, an unemployed former bricklayer, had been laid off from his job two months prior to the attack.
Prior to the attack, he lived at home with his parents, 22-year-old sister, and 20-year-old brother.
He was a graduate of the Al-Murad Institute, where he studied the Quran.
Attack on the Jewish community at Bondi Beach
For between 10 and 20 minutes on Sunday evening, the gunmen had fired on attendees at the Hanukkah event, gunning down men, women, and children as terrified beachgoers fled.
The victims were aged between 10 and 87. Among them were a rabbi who was a father of five, a Holocaust survivor, a Slovak woman, and a 10-year-old girl, according to interviews, officials, and local media reports. The 40 people taken to the hospital after the attack included two police officers who were in a serious but stable condition, police said.
Witnesses said the attack at the beach, crowded on a hot weekend evening, sent about 1,000 people attending a Hanukkah event fleeing along the sand and into nearby streets.
A bystander, Ahmed al Ahmed, captured on video tackling and disarming an armed man during the attack, has been hailed as a hero whose action saved lives. He had surgery after being shot twice.