It’s one of the great weeks in the Bulldogs’ history, but club chief executive Aaron Warburton is sitting in a quiet corner of a Las Vegas bar wiping tears from his eyes.

We have been talking for less than 10 minutes and the emotion is overwhelming about what he saw, heard and felt on December 14 at Bondi Beach when two gunmen opened fire and killed 15 people in an antisemitic terror attack now the subject of a royal commission.

It’s not well known that the Dogs boss is a Bondi resident. He and his wife Britt had a front-row view of what unfolded that tragic day.

“A minute after putting our groceries down that day after our grocery shopping Britt and I heard a bang,” Aaron said.

“I looked outside and I could see what looked like old men wrestling. I said f--- there is a guy with a gun, and then I said there is two of them.

“My place to the bridge where the two men shot from … I could throw a cricket ball there.”

He’s using sporting references to help him cope. He has been struggling to process what happened to those innocent families. Warburton’s balcony is probably 50 metres from the bridge and a similar distance to where Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram parked their car. Police shot dead Sajid, while his son has been charged with almost 60 offences, including 15 murders.

Bulldogs CEO Aaron Warburton with wife Britt.Credit: Christian Gilles

“They killed those poor people on our doorstep,” he said. “Britt and I were at home with our son. It was like any Sunday in summer, we don’t have a plan and we are often in that park or at the beach because it’s our backyard. I remember hearing a noise. Then I looked outside and there’s a guy with a gun … you could hear the shooting. There’s a guy with a gun. It was 50 metres away ... I could see the guy in the white pants just walking up the bridge to join another person to just start shooting, and we didn’t know he was the son at the time.

© Brisbane Times