{"id":216155,"date":"2026-01-04T10:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216155\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:11:13","slug":"ashes-crowd-applauds-bondi-beach-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216155\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashes crowd applauds Bondi Beach hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ahmed<\/p>\n

\nAhmed Al Ahmed, the man who tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi beach attackers, walks onto the Sydney Cricket Ground during a ceremony honouring emergency workers and survivors of the shooting, before the start of fifth Ashes cricket Test match between Australia and England, 4 January, 2026.
\nPhoto: AFP\n<\/p>\n

Ahmed Al Ahmed, who disarmed one of the shooters in the Bondi Beach attack<\/a>, has been loudly applauded at the fifth Ashes cricket test at the Sydney Cricket Ground.<\/p>\n

Before the match started, there was a special ceremony to mark the 15 lives lost in the shooting attack last month<\/a> and to pay tribute to a representative group for their bravery in responding to the attack.<\/p>\n

The group were cheered warmly by the crowd who rose to acknowledge them, with the biggest clapping for Al Ahmed, who emerged to walk through a guard of honour by the two cricket teams.<\/p>\n

Al Ahmed’s left arm was in a sling. He had needed surgeries for gunshot injuries in the attack, and was widely acknowledged as a hero after footage had shown him sneaking up behind one of the two shooters and wrestling a gun from him.<\/p>\n

In an interview with CBS News in the US last week, Al Ahmed reflected on the ordeal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I jumped onto his back and hit him\u2026 ‘Drop your gun, stop doing what you’re doing,'” he recalled saying to the gunman he disarmed.<\/p>\n

“No, I didn’t worry about anything\u2026 my target was just to take the gun from him and to stop him from killing a human being.<\/p>\n

“I feel something, a power in my body, my brain. I don’t want to see people killed in front of me, I don’t want to see blood, I don’t want to hear his gun, I don’t want to see people screaming.<\/p>\n

“My soul asked me to do that.”<\/p>\n

– ABC, RNZ Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahmed Al Ahmed, the man who tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi beach attackers, walks onto the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-216155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}