The shooting started just a couple minutes before Victor and Daniel planned to remove their weapons from their backpacks. The hail of bullets came not from them, but from across the street. Victor and Daniel were two of the first victims to fall, as were all the patrons sitting outside underneath the green umbrellas. The bouncer at the door was dead before he even realized what was happening. The shooter continued to fire into the interior of the pub as he walked slowly across the street and closer and closer to the pub. Tzvika, who was standing behind the bar when the shooting began, was crouched low to the floor, bleeding from his arm. A shattered bottle had sliced a gash just below his elbow. Though the firing only lasted a few minutes, it seemed like an eternity for those hiding underneath tables, trying to scramble away from the path of the bullets.
There were already multiple casualties by the time an off-duty security professional emerged from a kiosk next to Tzvika’s. He was the one who neutralized the shooter. The shooter was now dead, but not before he’d turned Tzvika’s into a slaughterhouse. Sirens began blaring almost immediately, and within a few minutes, police and army officials had the street cordoned off. Following protocol, they were already searching for other terrorists still in the vicinity. Emergency medical staff were frantically searching for survivors and loading them into the procession of ambulances already at the scene. Police were confounded when, in their search for other explosive devices or weapons, they found two untouched backpacks with Israeli patches loaded with automatic weapons. They appeared to belong to two Ukrainian immigrants who were among the terrorist’s victims.