Chaos at a Sydney mall as six stabbed to death
Forty-year-old attacker fatally shot by police officer had a history of mental-health issues, officials say
Police have identified the assailant who stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping centre before he was fatally shot by a police officer.
New South Wales Police said Sunday that Joel Cauchi, 40, was responsible for the Saturday afternoon attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs and not far from the world-famous Bondi Beach. Eight other people were injured, including a nine-month-old.
NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters at a media conference on Sunday that Cauchi suffered from yet unspecified mental-health issues and police investigators weren’t treating the attack as terrorism-related.
“We are continuing to work through the profiling of the offender but very clearly to us at this stage it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved,” Cooke said.
“There is still, to this point … no information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation — ideology or otherwise,” he added.
The man was shot dead by a female police inspector after he turned and raised a knife, Cooke told reporters.
“This all happened very, very quickly — the officer that was in the vicinity attended on her own, was guided to the location of the offender by people who were in the centre,” he said. “She took the actions that she did saving a range of people’s lives.”
The attack at the shopping centre, one of the country’s busiest and which was a hub of activity on a particularly warm fall afternoon, began at about 3:10 p.m. and police were swiftly called.
“They just said ‘run, run, run — someone’s been stabbed,’ ” one witness told ABC-TV in Australia. “(The attacker) was walking really calmly like he was having an ice cream in a park. And then he went up the escalators … and probably within about a minute we heard three gunshots.”
Six of the victims — five women and a man — and the suspect died. The officer conducted CPR on the attacker until the arrival of paramedics, who also worked on the man.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the eight injured people were being treated at hospitals. The baby required surgery, but it was too early to know the condition, she said.
Witnesses were shocked at the rare outburst of violence. Australia enacted strict gun laws after a man killed 35 and wounded another 23 in 1996, in Tasmania.
“I saw all the people running and I didn’t know what was happening,” said Ayush Singh. “I thought it was some people playing a prank or something and after some time I saw a guy with a knife running from the footpath to the cafe where I work.”
He said police arrived quickly and told everyone to stay put.
Singh said he saw the man running just metres (yards) away as he wielded a knife. “I didn’t hear him say anything,” he added. “Just a random guy stabbing people. Mad guy.”
Video footage shared online appears to show a man confronting the attacker on an escalator in the shopping centre by holding what appeared to be a post towards him.
Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC-TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a store during the incident.
“And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn’t know what to do,” he said.
“Then the very capable person in the store took us to the back where it can be locked. She then locked the store and then she then let us through the back and now we are out.”
‘‘ They ‘run, run, just run said — someone’s been stabbed.’ (The attacker) was walking really calmly like he was having an ice cream in a park. And then he went up the escalators … and probably within about a minute we heard three gunshots.
EYEWITNESS AT MALL