A woman who was shot in the Bondi terrorist attack was harbouring a three-year-old girl under her body as she lay bleeding on the ground to keep her safe from harm as bullets flew all around.
The distressed parents of the little girl, who went missing during the horrific attack, have spoken of the incredible moment they found her.
Wayne and Vanessa have three children and were in separate places when the attack began.
Panicked as the sound of bullets began to ring out, they called each other. They had one child each, but their youngest Gigi, a three-year-old girl, was not with either of them.
Standing in the park with one of their children, Wayne said he was struck in the face by a “branch” before he managed to grab his daughter and jump for shelter under a nearby table.
“I just lay on top of her,” he told Sky News Australia.
“Maybe a minute later Vanessa called and said: ‘Have you got Gigi?’, and I’m like I don’t have Gigi, she didn’t have Gigi and that’s when the absolute panic just set in.”
Vanessa, meanwhile, said she heard gunshots flying all around her. She saw her daughter dancing, and the next she was gone.
“I don’t know how I didn’t get hit. There were bullets all around me,” she said.
“All I can do is scream: ‘Where is my family? Where’s my little girl? Where’s my little girl?’
“I saw her dancing for a second and she was gone.”
She said a man was shot to death in front of her as she searched “his brain exploded right next to me”.
She said a police officer who had also been “shot in the in the head”, grabbed her and tried to force her to get down for her own safety.
“I actually tried to grab the policeman’s gun and he grabbed me. I was ready to just get in there and just – I didn’t know what to do. I could just see blood everywhere and then I stayed down. The bullets stopped,” she said.
At the same time, Wayne was waiting for what “felt like hours” for the shooting to end. He managed to find his wife and immediately running to search for their missing child.
“I gave Capri to Vanessa and I said: ‘I’m gonna go look for Gigi’. I went, I was looking, there was just blood and bodies everywhere and she was wearing a pink skirt and I saw this lady lying on top of her,” he said.
The woman had been shot in the horror, but told Wayne: “I’ve got your daughter, I’ve been protecting her”.
“I said: ‘You’ve saved my daughter’s life. I said I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life’,” Wayne said.
“Her name is Jess. I spoke to her about ten minutes after I took her (Gigi). She was going to hospital, she said she was okay.”
He said another woman was lying “lifeless” next to Jess.
“It was the most appalling experience,” he said. “That this can happen in Australia and we’re just lying there and shots were coming. We were like sitting ducks.”
He said there was a man lying near him who had been shot but he felt like he couldn’t help.
“I feel bad that there was nothing more that I can do but I had two little children and I just had to get them out of there,” he said.
