Police probe killer’s targeting of women in stabbing attack

Australian police have said they are investigating why a 40-year-old man with mental illness targeted women as he roamed a Sydney shopping centre with a large knife, killing six people and injuring a dozen more.

Videos shared on social media showed unshaven itinerant Joel Cauchi pursuing mostly female victims as he rampaged through the vast, crowded Westfield shopping complex in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.

Five of the six killed were women, as were most of those wounded. The sixth dead person was identified yesterday as Yixuan Cheng, a young Chinese woman who was a student.

“The videos speak for themselves, and that’s certainly a line of inquiry for us,” New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb told national broadcaster ABC. “That’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives, that that seems to be an area of interest – that the offender had focused on women and avoided men.”

Webb stressed that police could not know what was in the mind of the attacker. “That’s why it’s important now that detectives spend so much time interviewing those who know him.”

Cauchi’s Facebook profile said he came from Toowoomba, near Brisbane, and had attended a local high school and university. A distinctive grey, red and yellow dragon tattoo on his right arm was used to help identify him.

Andrew Cauchi, his father, told local media he was “heartbroken” and did not know what drove his son to kill. “This is so horrendous, I can’t even explain it,” he told reporters outside his Queensland home. “I made myself a servant to my son when I found out he had a mental illness.

“I did everything in my power to help my son,” said the visibly distressed father. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do or say to bring back the dead.”

He said he believed his son primarily attacked women because “he wanted a girlfriend, he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated”.

“He is my son, and I am loving a monster. To you he is a monster, to me he was a very sick boy.”

The other women killed were a designer, a volunteer surf lifesaver, the daughter of an entrepreneur, and a new mother whose wounded nine-month-old baby is in hospital.

The mother, 38-year-old Ashlee Good, handed her injured baby girl to strangers in desperation before being rushed to hospital where she died of her wounds.

He is my son, and I am loving a monster. To you he is a monster, to me he was a very sick boy ANDREW CAUCHI, FATHER OF KILLER

Her baby, named Harriet, remained in a stable condition in a Sydney hospital, police said.

The only man killed was 30-year-old Pakistani Faraz Tahir, who was working as a security guard when he was stabbed. A total of eight people wounded in the assault remain in hospital – some in critical condition – after four were released in the past 24 hours.

Cauchi’s assault, which lasted about half an hour, was brought to an end when police inspector Amy Scott shot him dead.

A public coroner’s inquiry would be held into the attack, New South Wales premier Chris Minns said.