{"id":12451,"date":"2025-12-19T07:27:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/australias-bondi-hero-handed-2-5-million-collected-from-fundraising\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T07:27:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:27:26","slug":"australias-bondi-hero-handed-2-5-million-collected-from-fundraising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/australias-bondi-hero-handed-2-5-million-collected-from-fundraising\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia&#8217;s &#8216;Bondi Hero&#8217; handed $2.5 million collected from fundraising"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>A man credited with saving lives for wrestling a gun from one of the alleged attackers during a mass &zwnj;shooting at Australia&rsquo;s Bondi beach received a check for more than A$2.5 million ($1.65 million) on Friday, after tens of thousands of people contributed to a donation website.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed al &#8288;Ahmed hid behind parked cars before charging at one &zwj;of the gunmen from behind, seizing his weapon and &zwj;knocking him to &zwj;the ground. Ahmed suffered gunshot wounds after apparently being fired on &#8288;by a second perpetrator and remains in hospital after undergoing surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed, a Muslim father-of-two, was presented with an &#8203;oversized check at his St. George hospital bed by Zachery Dereniowski, a social media influencer and co-organizer of the GoFundMe page, videos posted online showed.<\/p>\n<p>More than 43,000 people worldwide contributed to the fundraising, including billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman who gave A$99,999 and &#8288;shared the fundraiser on his X account.&nbsp; Australia&rsquo;s prime minister and the state premier have visited Ahmed in hospital to praise his bravery.<\/p>\n<p>When handed the check, Ahmed asks, &ldquo;I deserve it?&rdquo; to which Dereniowski says &ldquo;every penny&rdquo;, the video shows.<\/p>\n<p>When asked what he would say to the people who donated, Ahmed said: &ldquo;To stand with each other, all human beings. And forget everything bad &hellip; and keep going to save life.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>&ldquo;When I saved the people I&nbsp; (did it) from the heart because it was a nice day, everyone enjoying celebrating, with their kids, woman, man, teenager all, everyone was happy and they deserve, they deserve to enjoy,&rdquo; &#8203;Ahmed said, raising his uninjured fist in the air.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This country (is the) best&nbsp;country in the world, best country in the world, but we&rsquo;re &#8288;not going to stand and keep watching &ndash; enough is enough. God protect Australia. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.&rdquo; The tobacco store owner did not say what he planned to do with &zwj;the money.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed, 43, left his hometown in Syria&rsquo;s northwest province of &zwnj;Idlib nearly 20 years ago &zwnj;to seek work in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen people &zwj;were killed and dozens wounded on Sunday after two gunmen opened fire at people celebrating &zwnj;Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights at the &zwj;famous beach. Authorities allege a 50-year-old father, who was shot dead by police, and his 24-year-old son, who was critically wounded, carried out the attack.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"small-caps text-small text-serif\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">&copy; Thomson Reuters 2025.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p><sub><\/sub><\/p>\n<div>Australia&rsquo;s &lsquo;Bondi Hero&rsquo; handed $2.5 million collected from fundraising<\/div>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/migrant-acquitted-in-first-trial-over-us-border-military-zones\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">Migrant acquitted in first trial over US border military zones<\/span><\/a><\/div><p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man credited with saving lives for wrestling a gun from one of the alleged attackers during a mass &zwnj;shooting at Australia&rsquo;s Bondi beach received a check for more than A$2.5 million ($1.65 million) on Friday, after tens of thousands of people contributed to a donation website. Ahmed al &#8288;Ahmed hid behind parked cars before&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/australias-bondi-hero-handed-2-5-million-collected-from-fundraising\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Australia&#8217;s &#8216;Bondi Hero&#8217; handed $2.5 million collected from fundraising&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12452,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}