Luca dreams of becoming a paramedic. He was one of the first on the scene after the Bondi attack

He hesitated for a split-second, torn between helping police secure the gunman or attending to the bleeding couple on the pavement. He chose the couple: Boris and Sofia Gurman.

“My first instinct was to help them,” he said. “At the point I felt a bit more safe because everyone was yelling, ‘he is down he is down, he is dead’.”

Luca’s surf life-saving training clicked in. He checked Boris’ breathing and pulse, then placed his hands on his chest to begin CPR. Just as he was about to start compressions, a bystander pulled him away. It was too late.

The injuries were, in Luca’s words, “incompatible with life”.

“It was awful,” Luca said.

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Before 6.47pm that Sunday, Luca’s biggest worry was his university applications. A minute later, he was submerged in the kind of mass-casualty event most paramedics spend their careers avoiding.

Unable to help the Gurmans, he sprinted toward 30-year-old Gefen Bitton, who had been shot three times. Luca was the first to reach him, plunging his fingers into the wounds to apply pressure.

“He was just screaming,” Luca said. “It was just me and him there, and all I could do was apply pressure and reassure him.”

When a professional paramedic arrived, Luca handed Geffen over and ran to the next victim. The next hours were a blur.

“It felt like I was in a movie in the worst possible sense. You stood up and nothing seemed real. Everyone was screaming, in tears. There were children around, a police presence. It just didn’t feel real.”

He next gave CPR to an elderly man, then a young woman shot in the neck – “I don’t if he is…” he trails off, unable to finish. This is perhaps the one thing that troubles Luca. He doesn’t know what happened to those he helped.

‘This is where I belong. This is truly what I want to do and should be doing with my life.’

Luca left Bondi covered in blood. He carried the lifeless and plugged the wounds of the living. At one point, he found his father in the crowd; together, they worked to cover the bodies of the deceased to shield them from the prying lenses of bystanders’ phones.

Some of that blood lingers on his white sneakers. The memories linger in his mind, but for Luca, the most lasting impression he has isn’t horror. It’s the mateship he witnessed that day.

“I realised everyone was helping everyone. It wasn’t what you see in the States when you see people running away and not helping. In that moment, I really saw what it means to be Australian and what it means to be a mate.”

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The experience has not tarnished his paramedic dreams; it has solidified them.

“I’ve never had someone pass away in my hands. I’ve never had to work on someone who was as lifeless,” he said. “It’s shown me another side of what I will be dealing with.

“If this is what I am going to have to be dealing with, then I want to be there for those people and those families. This is where I belong. This is truly what I want to do and should be doing with my life.”

When it was all over, the sun setting, Lucas found his mum and 11-year-old sister, wrapping her into his arms so she would not see the bodies as they walked away.

Later, when his mother saw the news footage of her son in red shorts, running towards the danger, she was petrified. “She was furious,” Luca said. She kept asking, “why, why did you do it?”

But today, as she watches him recount the day, her hands are over her mouth. She is no longer angry. She is proud.

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