The daughter of one of the victims of Sunday’s Bondi Beach terror attack told CBS News on Monday that her father was “shot dead for being Jewish,” and she now believes Australia is not a safe home for Jewish people.
Sheina Gutnick said that her father, Reuven Morrison, a 62-year-old Soviet-born member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Australia, was killed while attempting to stop one of the two gunmen during Sunday’s mass shooting, which Australian authorities have called an antisemitic terror attack.
“From my sources and understanding, he had jumped up the second the shooting started. He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist,” Gutnick told CBS News in Bondi on Monday, referencing an attempt to stop one of the gunmen that was caught on camera during the attack the previous day.
She said it was her father seen trying to stop one of the assailants after another man, later identified as 43-year-old fruit seller Ahmed al Ahmed, confronted the suspect and wrestled a gun away from him.
“I believe after Ahmed managed to get the gun off the terrorist, my father had then gone to try and unjam the gun, to try and attempt shooting. He was screaming at the terrorist,” she said. “My dear father, Reuven Morrison was shot dead for being Jewish at a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach while protecting lives, while jumping up, putting his own life at risk to save his fellow Jewish community members.”
Dramatic social media video verified by CBS News Confirmed shows Morrison throwing objects at one of the suspected shooters after another man, confirmed by Australian authorities as Ahmed, tackled and disarmed him.
Courtesy of Sheina Gutnick
Gutnick recalled the devastating moment that she found out her father had been killed in the attack.
“As my family was exiting a Hanukkah event in Melbourne we heard news from a friend that there was a shooting happening in Sydney. I immediately felt the biggest pit in my stomach and tried calling my father who did not pick up the phone. I then called my mother and I heard screaming, shouting. She was screaming that there’s an active shooter,” Gutnick said. “I called her back and she was yelling that he’s running, he’s running, and then that he has been shot. After a few more attempts of hanging up and calling back, my mother was yelling for medical assistance, screaming for an ambulance, screaming for help, asking for help … she then advised that he’s getting oxygen and hung up the phone.”
She said she managed to get her mother back on the phone, “and she was screaming that they had stopped working on him and that he had been covered by a sheet. I was hoping in her hysterical state that she was just being delusional and that wasn’t the case.”
Gutnick said that she believes Australia is no longer a safe country for the Jewish community, and she blamed the country’s government, accusing leaders of failing to address a rising tide of antisemitism.
Australian police, “lay on the ground in the grass covering their heads, untrained for this massacre, untrained for what’s to come, untrained for what the Jewish community has been telling the Australian government is inevitable,” Gutnick said, adding her voice to a chorus of criticism after a documented rise in hate attacks aimed at Australia’s Jewish residents.
“Australia’s not a home for Jews anymore. It can’t be. If we are shot dead while celebrating our religious festival of lights, of pride, of celebrating who we are, and if we can’t do that, Australia is not a house for us anymore. We can’t be here,” she added
Morrison had fled the Soviet Union to escape antisemitic persecution five decades ago, Gutnick said, and said she was left with a sense of “betrayal” due to the manner of her father’s death.
“He came to Australia because he thought that this would be safe,” she said. “This is where he was going to have a family, where he is going to live a life away from persecution.”
“And for many years, he did do that — he lived a wonderful, free life — until Australia turned on him.”
“I feel betrayed by the government. I feel the signs were coming for a long, long time. The warning bells were there, and the government sat doing nothing.”
“The Jewish community are hurting today,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters Monday at a memorial on Bondi Beach. “Today, all Australians wrap our arms around them and say, we stand with you. We will do whatever is necessary to stamp out antisemitism. It is a scourge, and we will eradicate it together.”
Flavio Brancaleone/REUTERS 
One of the suspects, a father and son, was killed on Sunday, and the younger man — who was investigated in 2019 over suspected links to extremism but deemed to not represent a threat — remained hospitalized in a coma on Monday, Albanese said.
“People’s circumstances can change,” he told reporters before a cabinet meeting on Monday. “People can be radicalized over a period of time. [Gun] Licences should not be in perpetuity.”
“We are very much working through the background of both persons. At this stage, we know very little about them,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said Monday.
Gutnick said that she would remember her father as a hero who “went down fighting.”
“He added so much light into the world. There was no human on Earth you could compare him to. If there was one way for him to go from this Earth, he would be fighting a terrorist. There was no other way he would have been taken from us,” Gutnick said.