‘Get out, you need to go’ – Irishman tells of horrifying scenes in Sydney

● Clare man was in shopping centre as attack took place

ACo Clare man has described the “horrifying scenes” he witnessed yesterday in the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre in Sydney, Australia, which “shook him to the core”.

Six people were killed and several others were injured in the attack, including a small child. Police shot the 40-year-old attacker dead.

Niall Naughton, who is from Boston, Co Clare, has been living in Sydney for the last seven months and went to the centre to do some shopping.

“Usually, I don’t venture to Bondi but for some reason I did today, unfortunately,” Mr Naughton told RTÉ’s Saturday with Colm Ó Mongáin.

“I went in and I got my hair cut, which was on the same floor that everything happened,” he added.

However, he was in a clothes shop fitting room when the attack began.

“I could hear what sounded like a stampede of cattle coming running through the shop. I had the curtain closed in the dressing room, so I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear everything,” he said.

“Next thing, somebody pulled back my curtain and said: ‘Get out, get out, get out, you need to go, you need to go. There’s a stabbing, someone’s stabbing, terrorism.’”

Mr Naughton said he did not have the chance to look back to see what was happening as everyone was running in one direction. “We were escorted down to the basement, the storeroom in Zara, by Zara staff. They managed to bolt the door and we got down on the ground, and everyone was screaming, crying.

“It was absolutely horrific — and there were even kids as young as four years of age in the room with us.”

The lack of knowledge of what had happened led to panic, Mr Naughton said, despite staff doing their best to get customers to safety.

“Ultimately, everyone was in such a state of panic — and I think everyone was really just in such distress and overwhelmed... everyone was screaming and crying.

“It wasn’t a very calm situation. But, you know, naturally enough, you’d be in that state when you hear of someone stabbing or shooting. So it was just horrific,” Mr Naughton said.

The number of people in the basement made it difficult for the Clare man to contact his family, as the crowds were so close together.

“I was even thinking of my own family at the time. What if there is a possibility that something is going to happen to me and I’m going to die? I couldn’t even reach for my phone at this stage, because there was so many of us crammed into the room,” he said.

As the person closest to the emergency door, Mr Naughton said he opened it to see if it was safe for the crowd of people to evacuate. He described how the scenes outside were like something from a movie.

“I was happy enough ultimately to open the door and just pop my head slowly around the corner, which was off the back of the shopping centre,” Mr Naughton said.

“As I did so, I could see hundreds and hundreds of people coming running across the road. There’s a two-way street there and they were coming running across in front of cars, there were cars driving at full speed. It was like something you would see out of a movie, it was that scary,” he added.

Once Mr Naughton got out of the storeroom, he ran away from the shopping centre.

“I just kept running, that’s all I could do — run as far away from the shopping centre as I could,” he said.

It wasn’t until he met an Irish couple, also running, that he was able to hear details of what happened.

“While I was running, there was an Irish couple beside me. They were in their mid-30s and both of them were in distress, crying. They were actually in this shopping centre and saw everything that had happened at the time as well. So it was then that I actually got the first accurate information about the incident that occurred,” he said.

After running about a kilometre to a nearby park, Mr Naughton called his friend, not knowing what he should do next. Mr Naughton, who works in mental health, said while he would consider himself a strong person, he was shook from the events. “This has properly shook me to the core. I never in my life thought I’d ever be in some form of attack like that,” he said.

“This definitely is going to have a ripple effect towards everybody living in Sydney. But also in the context of the wider world, something like this never happens especially in an area like Sydney,” he added.

Aman stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping centre on Saturday afternoon before being shot by police. Hundreds of people fled the chaotic scene, many weeping as they carried their children. And eight people, including a nine-month-old baby, were injured.

New South Wales police said they believed a 40-year-old man was responsible for yesterday’s attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs and not far from the world-famous Bondi Beach.

They said they were not able to name him until a formal identification had taken place, but that they were not treating the attack as terror-related.

The man was shot dead by a police inspector after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke said.

“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 and saved people’s lives.”

The attack at the shopping centre, one of Australia’s busiest, began around 3:10pm and police were swiftly called.

“They just said: ‘Run, run, run — someone’s been stabbed,’” one witness told ABC TV.

“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 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 was in surgery, but it was too early to know the condition, she said.

are confident that there is no ongoing risk, and we are dealing with one person who is now deceased,” Ms Webb said in a later briefing. “It’s not a terrorism incident.”

Witnesses were shocked at the rare outburst of violence. In 1996, Australia enacted strict gun laws after a man in Tasmania killed 35 people and wounded another 23.

“I saw all the people running and I didn’t know what was happening,” Ayush Singh said. “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.

Mr Singh said he saw the man running as he wielded a knife. “I didn’t hear him say anything,” he added. “Just a random guy stabbing people.”

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.

An employee at the COS shop, Rashdan Aqashah said he watched a man confront the attacker on an escalator using a pole.

He said: “I saw this one guy fighting with the killer. He was holding the pole, trying to throw a pole at the escalator.

“I grabbed my manager to shut the store door. It was just in front of our store.”

Footage posted to X shows a man pointing a security pole at the attacker standing beneath him on the escalator.

Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV, told the network that he shel“We tered in a store during the incident.

“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.”

I heard the kids screaming... then I saw a dead body

As the attack unfolded, panicked individuals streamed out of the shopping centre, many with children in their arms. Paramedics treated injured people at the scene. The shopping centre and the surrounding area remained in lockdown as police piece together what went on.

“This was a horrific act of violence indiscriminately targeted at innocent people going about a normal Saturday, doing their shopping,” said Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese.

“Today Bondi Junction was the scene of horrific violence — but it was also witness to the humanity and the heroism of our fellow Australians, our brave police, our first responders, and of course our everyday people who could never have imagined that they would face such a moment,” he added.

The most senior members of Britain’s royal family, who are also royals in Australia, expressed their shock and sadness over the stabbings.

King Charles said he and his wife Camilla were “utterly shocked and horrified” by the “senseless attack” and that their “hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who have been so brutally killed”.

Prince William and his wife Catherine said they too were “shocked and saddened” and that their thoughts were with those affected and the “heroic emergency responders who risked their own lives to save others”.

Pope Francis also expressed his sadness at the “senseless tragedy” in Sydney, offering his “spiritual closeness” to all those affected and prayers for the dead and injured.

Members of the public were priased for showing bravery during the attack on the first day of the school holidays. Shoppers provided medical aid to victims and attempted to stop the attacker as he went on his rampage.

The attacker targeted “shoppers peacefully going about their lives” but “their first instinct in the face of danger was to help someone else”, the Australian prime minister said.

The highest-ranking police officer in the state, Karen Webb, thanked the shopkeepers and shoppers who “showed amazing courage and bravery”.

One woman said she saw two dead bodies before she hid in the Lululemon sportswear shop.

She told ABC News: “At the counter while I was as paying I heard this screaming of kids, women and men outside the shop — as soon as I turned my face to look I saw a guy who was wearing this green outfit, jersey materials, with shorts and a T-shirt with a very massive knife on hand.

“Then I saw a dead body right in front. There was massive amounts of blood around that body, a few metres after there was another dead body as well on the floor which was pretty scary.

“He had already stabbed two and they were on the floor and he was trying to turn back, like a U-turn, back to Lululemon shop, then I just screamed: ‘Where is the safest changing room in which I can go and lock myself.’

“I was really in fear, I was thinking if they couldn’t shut Lululemon door then I would maybe get stabbed — we locked down inside Lululemon for 45 minutes to one hour as the police came.”

People were still sheltered in the salon hours after the attack.

New South Wales’ acting premier Penny Sharpe thanked the firstresponder and the “innocent bystanders” who “stood up”.

She said: “I want to thank, on behalf of the New South Wales government, all of those who stood up today in the most frightening of experiences and the most frightening events that you would ever expect to see.”