Sajid Akram: Neighbors of alleged Bondi gunmen shocked by rampage

Like many people in Sydney, Glenn Nelson spent his Sunday evening watching television coverage of a deadly shooting on the city’s iconic Bondi Beach.

But stepping onto his front porch, flanked by neatly trimmed box hedges, he saw armed police cordoning off the street before raiding the house opposite – home of the two suspects who are alleged to have killed 15 people in Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades.

“I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll catch the rest in the morning,’ the next thing, the drama is out the front door,” he said in an interview on Monday, shortly after mowing his lawn.

Nelson and other neighbours said the family living across the street kept to themselves, but seemed like any other in the suburb of Bonnyrigg, a working-class, well-kept enclave with an ethnically diverse population around 36 km (22 miles) by road from Sydney’s central business district.

Local media named the two suspected gunmen as father and son Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram.

Police have not named the suspects, but they said the older man, 50, was killed at the scene, taking the number of dead to 16, while his 24-year-old son was in a critical condition in hospital.

Police said the son was known to authorities and the father had a firearms license.

The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to a woman on Sunday evening who identified herself as the wife and mother of the suspects.

She said the two men had told her they were going on a fishing trip before heading to Bondi and opening fire on an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

“I always see the man and the woman and the son,” said 66-year-old Lemanatua Fatu, who lives across the street.

“They are normal people.”

Until Sunday’s shooting, Bonnyrigg was an otherwise unremarkable neighbourhood typical of Sydney’s sprawling Western suburbs.

It has significant Vietnamese and Chinese communities, along with many residents who were born in Iraq, Cambodia and Laos, according to government data.

The town centre, a strip mall with a large adjoining car park, is flanked by a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several churches.

“It’s a quiet area, very quiet,” Fatu said. “And people mind their own business, doing their own thing – until now.”

Not much is currently known about the suspects’ backgrounds.

A Facebook post from an Arabic and Koran studies institute appearing to show one of the men was removed on Monday and no one answered the door at an address listed for it in the neighbouring suburb of Heckenberg.

On Monday afternoon, as police took down their cordon, several people re-entered the house, covering their faces. They made no comment to the media and did not answer the door.