Multiple people stabbed during Mass at Sydney church
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times.
A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off.
The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following,
Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number of people were stabbed.
Officers arrested a male and he is assisting police with inquiries.
The injured people suffered nonlife threatening injuries and are being treated by New South Wales (NSW) ambulance paramedics.
It is the second stabbing incident in Sydney after six people were killed in a knife attack at a mall in Sydney’s Bondi area on Saturday.
NSW police are investigating if the suspected killer, Joel Cauchi, deliberately targeted women and children as the NSW government announces a coronial inquiry into the stabbings.
While a motive is not yet known, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb yesterday confirmed investigators would look at if Cauchi had been targeting women and children specifically.
Webb said videos of the incident that had quickly spread online “speak for themselves.”
“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest — that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” she said.
Police have also been speaking with Cauchi’s family and people who knew him from Queensland and who may have interacted with him in NSW before the rampage.
Cauchi’s Queensland-based father, Andrew, said his mentally unwell son had been a “very sick boy” since he was a teenager and the family had done “everything in my power” to help him.
“He is my son and I am loving a monster,” he said.
“To you, he is a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy,” he said.
Andrew said his son had been taken off medication, “because he was doing so well, but then he just took off to Brisbane.”
His mother, Michele, said her heart went out to those her son had hurt.
“He was brought up in love,” she said.
“If he was in his right mind he would be absolutely devastated with what he has done,” she said.
Cauchi’s interactions with police and other government agencies, including medical professionals in both states, will be looked at closely when a coronial inquiry into the incident begins following an US$18 million injection from the state government.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has also ordered a review of the powers held by security guards, while ruling out handing them firearms or stun guns.
“Families are in mourning today, lives have been devastated as a result of these criminal actions and we think about those families,” he said.
“The people who were killed were ... innocent people who had their entire lives ahead of them. The community is devastated in the knowledge of their loss, whether we were personally known to those who were killed or not,” he said.
Floral tributes continued to grow outside the eastern suburbs shopping center that also serves as a service and transport hub for residents and tourists heading to Sydney’s famous beaches, including Bondi.
The Sydney Opera House was last night lit up with a black ribbon to mourn and honor the victims.
The families of the six Sydney stabbing victims are being offered time to walk through the shopping center where their loved ones were murdered on Saturday before it reopens to the public.