‘Obvious’ killer targeted women, Sydney police say
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian police said yesterday they are investigating why a 40-year-old man with a mental illness appeared to target women as he roamed a Sydney shopping mall with a large knife, killing six people and wounding 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 victims killed were women, as were most of those wounded.
“The videos speak for themselves don’t they, and that’s certainly a line of inquiry for us,” New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb said.
“That’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives, that it seems to be an area of interest – that the offender had focused on women and avoided men,” she told national broadcaster ABC.
Webb stressed that police could not know what was in the mind of the attacker, who was shot dead by a police officer.
“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.
His parents say he had suffered from mental health issues since he was a teenager.
Andrew Cauchi, the 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.”