A brief phone call between a mother and her son has become a chilling reminder of how an ordinary moment can mask an extraordinary act of violence. On Sunday morning, hours before a deadly mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, 24-year-old Naveed Akram called his mother, Verena. Nothing in the conversation suggested what was to come.
“I just went for a swim. I went scuba diving. We’re going… to eat now, and we’re going to stay home now because it’s very hot,” Verena recalled her son saying in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.
At the time, the family believed Naveed and his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, were heading on a fishing trip along Australia’s South Coast. It seemed harmless. That belief would soon collapse.
By late Sunday afternoon, police say Naveed and Sajid opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration near Bondi Beach, where hundreds had gathered. Sixteen people have been killed so far in what authorities have described as a terrorist attack targeting Sydney’s Jewish community. Sajid Akram was shot dead at the scene, while Naveed was arrested and remains under police guard in hospital with serious injuries.
As the scale of the attack became clear, Verena struggled to reconcile the violence with the son she thought she knew.
“He doesn’t even go out. He doesn’t mix with friends. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t go to bad places … he goes to work, he comes home, he goes to exercise, and that’s it,” she said.
“Anyone would wish to have a son like my son … he’s a good boy,” she added, insisting she never believed he was capable of such an act or connected to extremism.
Verena also said she did not think her son owned a firearm, expressing disbelief that he could have carried out the attack.
Naveed had worked as a bricklayer but lost his job several months ago after his employer went into liquidation. His father ran a small fruit shop. The family lived together in a house in western Sydney that they bought last year.
Hours after the shooting, police discovered a homemade bomb in a car parked near Bondi Beach. Investigators said the “improvised explosive device” was likely planted by the father and son.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the attack “an act of pure evil” and announced that national flags would fly at half mast as Australia mourns the dead.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Australia’s government of “pouring oil on the fire of antisemitism” in the months leading up to the attack.
The shooting comes amid heightened fear within Australia’s Jewish community, following a rise in antisemitic incidents since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed.
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