(JEWISH GROUP) Texas rabbi shot trying to help, faces long recovery after Australia attack
Hundreds of people gathered in Sydney on Thursday to mourn the youngest victim of the terrorist attack that targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Australia's Bondi Beach. The 10-year-old girl, who has been publicly identified only as Matilda, has become a symbol of the country's grief for the 15 people killed by two gunmen.
Dozens of others were wounded in the shooting, including American Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, a 20-year-old who CBS News found holding a menorah in his hospital bed on Thursday as he was treated for gunshots to his stomach and thighs.
Leibel was volunteering at the event to mark the first day of Hanukkah, when shots rang out. His parents, meanwhile, were asleep at their home in Texas.
"In the middle of the night, we got, someone came to our door to tell us that there was a terrorist attack, and that Leibel was — people knew he was shot, but did not know what had happened to him," his mother Manya told CBS News on Thursday. "At that point, we did not if he was alive or what his status was."
It was a couple hours before they learned he was alive, but that he had been shot multiple times.
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