It was through a Facebook post that we first read about Lou Bougias, a “genuine hero”, as dubbed by another man, Henry Dow, who also stayed put while Dimitrious Gargasoulas’ maroon Holden Commodore was painting Bourke Street the same colour last Friday.

“Administering first aid with me, under that skinny little tree, is a man named Lou: he is everything great and courageous you have seen, heard or read, rolled into one authentically humble bloke,” Dow wrote.

Having seen the car fly past, Dow described the moments his legs carried him across the street almost on auto-pilot, “swearing under my breath repeatedly as it sunk in what had just happened. Some basic Surf Life Saving training got me through the first stages of helping this poor woman: roll her on her side, support her neck, we talked kindly and as calmly as we could to her,” he continued.

“Then the gunshots.”

While holding the woman’s hand, Dow’s hands were shaking, bouncing, moving several inches up and down from fear. He was losing it, just like many other pedestrians standing by, having not fled, but still too stunned to think or move.

“Lou grabbed my hand and firmly told me to keep it together, that I was OK and that we needed to keep strong for this woman. In a level and loud voice, Lou barked orders at others,” Dow described.

“He [Lou] directed assistance to several of the victims laying on the pavement around us, all whilst keeping me calm and speaking lovingly to this woman: ‘I am Lou, you are going to be OK, we are looking after you’.”

And while Dow was thanking his luck for having an emergency services veteran by his side, helping him pull it together, he finds out Lou was neither an ambulance or police officer or SAS, but a humble taxi driver.

“In our small story, of this much bigger tragedy, Lou took command and was a genuine hero.”

Henry Dow’s Facebook status was shared 18,000 times, in a way ‘forcing’ low-key Lou, Greek Australian Ilias Bougias, to come forward.

“I saw three people flying through the air, I wasn’t worried about myself,” he told Fairfax Media when recalling the tragic event, adding that if he had been closer to Gargasoulas’ car he would have attempted to intercept it.

“I was basically just trying to keep people calm and stabilised until the ambos turned up. I was thinking very clearly, I was talking to the victims, the coppers and everyone else who was trying to help. It was basically just a big team effort. I think it was just a matter of adrenaline.”

It was the military training he received at a younger age that had prepared him for such a predicament.

“I’m not a hero, I’m just a bloke who did what they had to do,” Bougias said. “If I had stopped the car, fine. But at no point was my life in danger, so I’m not a hero.”