Couple caught in Bondi Beach shooting panic as they lost track of young

Wayne and Vanessa Miller were at the event at Australia’s famous Bondi Beach on Sunday with their two daughters, and they said it was a joyful, peaceful event to celebrate the start of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, until it was shattered by two gunmen firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

“They were giving out donuts, and there was face painting and there was music, the kids were just having an absolute ball,” Wayne Miller told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King on Monday. 

Then, standing in a line with daughter Capri, Wayne heard what he first thought was a firecracker. Then there was another crack, and he realized it was gunfire. 

“My daughter was in front of me. I just turned, I grabbed her, and I just saw a table and I just dived under this table and I just lay on top of my daughter Capri,” he recalled. “I was just lying on top of her, just shielding her.”

“The bullets were just going off, people screaming and running and running. About two arm lengths from me, there was a guy shot on the floor who was screaming, ‘help, help!'” Miller recalled.

As rounds flew overhead, his wife called him, and they quickly realized they had lost track of their other little girl, Gigi, in the chaos.

“Vanessa calls me and says, ‘Have you got the girls?’ I’m like, ‘I’ve got Capri. I’m on top of Capri. Where’s Gigi? Gigi, you’re with Gigi. Where’s Gigi?’ She said, ‘No, I’m not with Gigi. Where’s Gigi?’ And at this stage, I thought, okay, I need to look for her, and I stuck my head out from under the table to look up into the field. And somebody shouted, ‘There’s gunshots!’ I just heard gunshots. And the guy said, Get down, get down, get down. And I just thought, ‘I just need to wait and protect my little Capri.'”

“It was terrifying,” said Vanessa. “I’m screaming and the gunshots are going and I’m trying to run.”

She said she even tried to grab a police officer’s gun at one point, “to save more lives.” 

“I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go,” the mother thought. “I felt hopeless. I looked, I was watching the whole thing. I just see people on the ground. I called my mother and I said, ‘Gigi’s dead. Gigi is dead, Gigi’s dead.’ I just knew she was dead … What does a three-year-old know? Three-year-old when gunshots are going, but you think they’re gonna drop to the ground and take cover? No. I just knew she’d be running around screaming. She was an easy target.”

Wayne eventually found his wife, handed their daughter Capri over to Vanessa, and then set out to look for Gigi.

“I ran back into the field to look for Gigi, and I was…