![\"Ahmed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766187372_932_1350.jpg\")
Ahmed al-Ahmed, who risked his life wrestling alleged Bondi shooter, speaks in hospital \u2013 video<\/p>\n
For Frost, 44, the answer is neither simple nor instinctive. He has spoken to Steven Gallant<\/a>, who was on day release from prison when he used a chair to help bring down the attacker, Usman Khan<\/a>, who had killed two people. \u201cHe said he reacted on instinct, whereas I was thinking about every action and consequence of it,\u201d Frost said.<\/p>\n When the London Bridge attack unfolded inside the hall on 29 November 2019, Frost said chaos and confusion took hold. \u201cThere was screaming, noise, no one knew what was going on and I imagine it would have been the same on Bondi Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n Darryn Frost: \u2018I can still remember the flecks of dust in the air.\u2019 Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Running towards danger, he insisted, was not a natural impulse. \u201cI don\u2019t think it comes naturally to anyone. I saw Saskia<\/a> [Jones, who was killed by the attacker] fall to the stairs, and she was very clearly severely injured. So the next thought in my mind was: \u2018I need to prevent that from happening to anyone else\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n He said what followed felt unreal: \u201cIt\u2019s crazy, but this was all happening in split seconds. It really is like the Superman or Spider-Man movies, or the Matrix, where time literally slows down for you.\u201d<\/p>\n He said his senses narrowed to a single point: the attacker. \u201cI had tunnel vision,\u201d he recalled. \u201cMy hearing switched off to everything around me except for the perpetrator in front of me. It\u2019s a really strange thing. Sirens, alarms were going off, I couldn\u2019t even hear that. All I could hear was what he was saying and anything that he did, my hearing just became super fine-tuned.<\/p>\n \u201cMy vision went tunnel vision just on to him so anything in the periphery I couldn\u2019t see at all, and what I could see was super-high detail like an 8K TV. I can still remember the flecks of dust in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n A neuroscientist, Dr Daniel Glaser, said humans, like all mammals, exhibit a natural \u201cfight or flight\u201d response to threat or surprise, but it does not dictate the course of action they choose.<\/p>\n \u201cIt prepares your muscles, and to some extent your brain, for action, but the action that you take depends on a bunch of other things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHow you perceive what\u2019s happening changes what you\u2019ll do, and your perceptions are driven by prejudice and expectations. Your sense of what\u2019s happening depends on what you expect to be happening and how you read different situations.<\/p>\n \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t necessarily think about it as a choice. There\u2019s very good evidence to say that lots of things in the brain which determine your behaviour happen before you\u2019re aware of them.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the kind of bravery that caused people to run towards danger while others were running away was guided not by \u201cinstinct\u201d, but by life experiences and any training they may have had.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Dan Barr, a former soldier<\/a>, was hailed as a hero for jumping into the car of Paul Doyle, who drove into crowds of pedestrians at the Liverpool FC parade.<\/p>\n Dan Barr. Photograph: Peter Byrne\/PA<\/p>\n Prof Craig Jackson, a chartered member of the British Psychological Society, who has a specialist interest in gun violence and mass killings, said there was no \u201cprofile\u201d of the kind of person who would \u201chave a go\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just as likely to be an angry mum in defence mode as it could be a fit, healthy rugby-playing male,\u201d said the professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University. \u201cThat\u2019s reassuring because that means that attackers, either lone wolves or terrorists, they\u2019re never quite sure who\u2019s going to be the hero who could challenge them.\u201d<\/p>\n