This man in the white t-shirt wrestled down one of the gunmen during the attack at Bondi Beach in Australia. On Sunday, two gunmen opened fire on people celebrating the start of Hanukkah. Sixteen lives were lost. Police have declared it a terror attack. Since then, the man who stopped one of the shooters has been hailed as a hero. He’s even received visits from high-ranking officials, including Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.
But in the hours after the attack, rumors spread online about his identity.
A viral post on X claimed the hero was Edward Crabtree, a 43-year-old father of two and local fruit shop owner. That’s false: Local media, officials, and Australia’s Home Affairs Minister confirmed his real name: Ahmed al Ahmed.
So where did the fake name come from?
It appears to trace back to a little-known website: thedailyaus.world.
It looks like a news outlet—but something’s off. The site has only a handful of articles, and most tabs lead nowhere.
We checked the domain using Who.is. It was created on the very day of the shooting—and registered in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The site is fake.
Its purpose? To spread the false identity of the Bondi Beach hero as Edward Crabtree. Why? Still unclear.
The claim spread widely on social media and was even repeated by X’s AI tool, Grok, when asked who the man was.
Meanwhile, Ahmed al Ahmed, the real hero—who was shot during the attack—is recovering in hospital.
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