The mother of the 24-year-old unemployed bricklayer behind the Bondi Beach terror attack has recalled the elaborate excuse he told family ahead of the massacre.
Naveed Akram, 24, and his father, 50, opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah event shortly before 7pm on Sunday, killing at least 16 people and injuring a further 40.
Akram was apprehended at the scene of the shooting and taken to hospital under police guard in critical but stable condition. His father died at the scene.
Speaking from her police-surrounded Bonnyrigg home, in Sydney‘s west, Akram’s mother Verena said the 24-year-old had told family he had gone to Jervis Bay with his father for a weekend of fishing and swimming.
‘He rings me up [on Sunday] and said, “Mum, I just went for a swim. I went scuba diving. We’re going… to eat now”,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘And then this morning, “we’re going to stay home now because it’s very hot”.’
Verena was unable to identify her son from a photo at the scene of the shooting, but insisted he was a ‘good boy’ who is incapable of violence or extremism.
‘He doesn’t have a firearm. He doesn’t even go out. He doesn’t mix around with friends. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t go to bad places,’ she said.
‘He goes to work, he comes home, he goes to exercise, and that’s it.’
Verena said Akram had worked as a bricklayer until about two months ago when the company became insolvent.
He had attended Cabramatta High School and was not particularly social, she said.
He lived at the three-bedroom Bonnyrigg home with his parents and younger sister and brother, around which police set up an exclusion zone on Sunday night.
Their neighbour, Lemanatua Fatu, told the Daily Mail she was shocked and scared to find out she was living opposite a killer.
‘We saw lots of police cars arriving in the street and especially in that house,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t sleep, watching everything – it was so scary.’
Asked about the killer and his family, she said: ‘We notice them coming and going everyday and they never say hello or anything, they were just normal people.
‘We were so shocked to know they shot people.
‘We saw them sometimes coming out of the house and doing normal things, it’s shocking and terrifying.’
Police also raided an address in Campsie, where the father and son are believed to have been staying before the shooting.
NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon confirmed all six firearms owned by the father, a licensed firearms holder, had been seized.
‘We are satisfied that we have six firearms from the scene yesterday, but also as a result of the search warrant at the Campsie address,’ he said.
‘Ballistics and forensic investigation will determine those six firearms are the six that were licenced to that man, but also they were used in the offence yesterday at Bondi.’