Bondi Beach shooting victim mourns as Texas rabbi recovers from injuries as he tries to help

in Sydney – Hundreds of people gathered in Sydney on Thursday to mourn the youngest victim terrorist attack that led to a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach. This 10-year-old girl, publicly identified as Matilda, has become a symbol of grief in the country for 15 people who were killed by two gunmen.

Dozens of others were injured in the incident, including American Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, a 20-year-old who was found by CBS News holding a menorah in his hospital bed on Thursday while being treated for gunshot wounds to his abdomen and thighs.

Leibel was volunteering at an event celebrating the first day of Hanukkah, when the gunfire rang out. His parents were sleeping in their house in Texas.

“In the middle of the night, we found out, someone came to our door to tell us that there was a terrorist attack, and that Leibel – people knew he had been shot, but they didn’t know what happened to him,” his mother Manya told CBS News on Thursday. “At that time, we didn’t know if he was alive or what his condition was.”

It was hours before they found out he was alive, but he had been shot multiple times.

“We immediately tried to find a way to get here,” said his father, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff.

After flying halfway around the world, they are at their son’s bedside in a Sydney hospital, where he tells them his story.

Leibel told her parents that after the shots were fired, she heard a police officer yelling that they had been shot, and she rushed to take off her shirt to use it as a recreational area. Trained to use a gun, he told his father that he had asked the policeman to give them their gun so that he could try to shoot and retaliate against the gunmen.

“While he was doing that, Leibel was shot,” his father told CBS News.

“Actually, I wasn’t surprised,” said his mother. “He’s a firecracker. He’s a quick thinker. He’s brave, strong, aggressive, aggressive and quick thinking..“

The young American rabbi, whose parents run the Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M University, was in Sydney to train with Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was laid to rest Wednesday at the first funeral of the 15 victims of the attack.

“He saw Rabbi Eli get shot, and Rabbi Eli was his mentor,” Leibel’s father told CBS News. “He said, ‘I wish there was more I could do.’

Four days after the attack, and after two surgeries, Lazaroff was battling an illness Thursday, and his parents know he’s still struggling to recover.

“He is in critical condition,” said his mother. “He has a road. There is still surgery.”

Her parents also wanted to send a message to leaders everywhere: that the Bondi Beach attack “needs to wake up.”

“Hate speech It’s not just freedom of speech,” said Manya. “It leads to bad things like this.”

Tucker Reals contributed to this report.