Partner’s impossible, tragic choice
It was a decision no person should have to make: But with his critically injured wife on the way to one hospital, and their baby daughter to another, Ashlee Good’s husband was forced to make the impossible choice.
Dan Flanagan got to St Vincent’s Hospital on Saturday to see his wife before she succumbed to her horrific injuries.
The distraught man was then whisked away in a police car across the city to the Children’s Hospital at Randwick where baby Harriet, nine months old, was being treated for stab wounds to her stomach.
It’s understood the baby girl’s grandmother was with her until Mr Flanagan arrived.
More details of those desperate hours after killer Joel Cauchi, 40, went on a rampage inside Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon were revealed yesterday as the centre was forced to bring in a second round of cleaners before it could reopen to the public.
The shopping complex is not expected to open before Friday.
CCTV capturing every move made by Cauchi from when he entered the centre at 3.20pm until he was gunned down by hero cop Inspector Amy Scott 25 minutes later have been seized by police.
Multiple police sources who have seen the vision said the crazed killer is indiscriminate in his slashing.
“You see him cut someone on the face, then drive the blade into the next person ... it’s brutal, frenzied,” the source said.
“The crime scene is huge ... there’s 18 people who have been stabbed, it’s horrific in there.”
Cauchi’s frenzied attack, which began on level four, claimed the lives of Ms Good, 38, fashion worker Dawn Singleton, 25, architect Jade Young, 47, security officer Faraz Tahir, 30, artist Pikria Darchia, 55, and university student Yixuan Cheng, 27.
Twelve other innocent people were wounded in the attack, and six of those survivors remain in hospital, but no one is considered to be in a lifethreatening condition.
Detectives piecing together Cauchi’s movements in the lead up to the April 13 mass murder discovered chilling Google searches on his phone including “how to kill”.
They also found he had recently wandered around Westfield shopping centres at Penrith and Parramatta, prompting police to probe whether he had those centres in his sights before he targeted Bondi Junction.
In a rental storage unit at Waterloo where Cauchi had his “worldly possessions”, police found the packet to the hunting knife he used in the killing, several other blades, a snorkelling kit and a bodyboard.
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said it would be many days or weeks before a full picture of the killer’s moves and motives could be established.
“I’ve made it also clear we may not ever get an answer, but we will get a picture of his movements and what he’d been doing in and around NSW and in Sydney in particular,” Commissioner Webb said.
Cauchi’s Queensland parents, who spotted their son on news reports and contacted NSW Police, revealed he had an obsession with knives. They believe he targeted women because of his own desire to have a girlfriend.
“He’s got no social skills. He was frustrated out of his brain,” his father Andrew said.
A floral shrine to the victims outside the shopping centre continues to grow and provide people with a place to mourn.
Waverley Council is now considering keeping the cards from the tributes and preserving them for the victims’ families, similar to what was done after the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014.
Meanwhile, separate online fundraisers have been set up to support the families of the victim. By late on Tuesday, donations to help Mr Flanagan and Harriet had almost reached $500,000.
“We know that no amount of money will ever substitute her presence in their lives, and thank you for your generous donations to date,” organiser Steve Foxwell said.
Post mortem examinations on all six victims are likely to be finished by Thursday, before an autopsy and toxicology tests are carried out on the killer.