Three Muslim men received immense appreciation on social media for risking their lives to save people in the Vienna attack earlier this week. The three men of Palestinian and Turkish origin helped emergency services during the Vienna shooting.
23-year-old Palestinian boy, Osama Joda, who works as a restaurant manager in McDonald’s risked his life to save the police officer who was shot by a terrorist in Vienna’s City center.
In his interview with, Al Jazeera, Joda said he was working in the restaurant when he heard several gunshots. Joda said, he saw a police officer wounded, he helped him to hide behind a concrete block, stopped his bleeding, and alerted other police officers.
Three men saved a shot police officer in Vienna. Two Turkish Austrians carried him to an ambulance under fire. A Palestinian man brought him to safety. That man’s family was almost stopped in 2019 from buying a house in Lower Austria b/c they are Muslim 🤦🏻♀️ https://t.co/d4bFngTK1G
— ashley passmore (@golatschen) November 3, 2020
He even assisted the wounded police officer to the ambulance amid heaving shooting. Vienna Police acknowledged Joda for his heroic effort by honoring him with Police Patch.
“The terrorist was 20 meters away from me,” Joda told Al Jazeera on a video call.
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“We pulled the injured officer aside. I immediately looked for the wound and tried to stop the bleeding with my hand. That did not help. So, I took off my jumper and tried to stop the bleeding with that instead. After 15 minutes the ambulance came.
Heroes who need to be talked about a lot more – they were #Muslims who acted on true Islamic teachings of saving a life is akin to saving the whole of humanity. Terrorists seek to divide, we must unite.https://t.co/1zgsx2gejr
— Fatir Tahir (@FatirTahir) November 3, 2020
“The assassin was still nearby. I went to the ambulance, but they were all in shock, they couldn’t move. I went back to the policeman. I was in shock myself and don’t remember who was standing next to me. But all of a sudden two young men came and helped to bring the wounded to safety.”
The other two men who helped him were Mikail Ozen, 25, and Recep Gültekin, 21-both martial arts fighters of Turkish origin. Before helping the policeman, they had helped an elderly woman escape the shootings.
Let's honor these three young Muslim men: Two Turks, Recep Gültekin & Mikail Özen, and a Palestinian, Osama Joda.
During the #ViennaAttack they helped save a police officer and an elderly woman.
They are the heroes of #Islam – not the monsters of ISIS:https://t.co/IGJ2nB9FQi
— Mustafa Akyol (@AkyolinEnglish) November 3, 2020
The video recorded from a nearby balcony showed the two men rushing to help the policeman.
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“I would do the same thing again today,” said Ozen in his interview to Al Jazeera. The two Turkish men had met Vienna Mayor who thanked them for their bravery.
Four people were killed and several others injured in an attack in Vienna, carried out by dual Austrian Macedonian national Kujtim Fejzulai.