They broke into apartment 1 at Connollystraße 31, which housed five coaches and two referees of the Israeli Olympic team.

As the terrorists broke into the apartment, Weinberg was confronted by the group's leader, Luttif Afif, whose own mother was Jewish and whose father was a wealthy Arab-Christian businessman from Nazareth,[2] in a nearby bedroom.

Weinberg picked up a nearby fruit knife and was shot through his cheek after slashing Afif, slicing his left breast pocket open but not reaching through to the flesh.

While the hostages were being marched back to the officials' apartment, Weinberg once again attacked the intruders, knocking one of them, Mohammed Safady, unconscious and allowing one of his wrestlers, Gad Tsobari, to escape via an underground parking garage.

[2] Weinberg’s cousin, Edward Carmel Eliash — who was, at the time of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Mayor of Tirat Carmel (Hebrew: טִירַת כַּרְמֶל‎), or Tirat HaCarmel, a city in the Haifa District in Israel — suffered a heart attack at the public memorial ceremony the following day at the Olympics.