At Least 6 Dead in Mall Stabbing That Horrifies Australians

[jserraglio]

At Least 6 Dead in Mall Stabbing That Horrifies Australians

The attack, Australia’s deadliest in eight years, stunned a nation where mass violence is rare. A police officer shot the attacker, preventing worse carnage.

New York Times
April 13, 2024, 7:26 a.m.
37 minutes ago
Victoria Kim, Yan Zhuang and Isabella Kwai

Here are the latest developments.

Six people were killed and several others injured in a stabbing rampage Saturday afternoon at a crowded major mall in Sydney, Australia’s deadliest act of mass violence in at least eight years.

The attacker was shot and killed by a lone police officer who was directed into the mall by people fleeing the scene, police said. The officer was following the man with the knife, trying to catch up to him, when he turned and lunged at her with the weapon, according to the police. The officer then opened fire, saving lives, Anthony Cooke, assistant commissioner for the New South Wales Police, said.

The man stabbed people as he moved through the mall, the police said. Four women and one man died at the scene. Emergency responders said eight people were transported to area hospitals, and the police said that one of them, a woman, later died. A 9-month-old baby was among those injured and has been in surgery, Karen Webb, the New South Wales Police commissioner, said.

The police said they have not formally identified the man but believe they know his identity. They believe he was 40 years old and acted alone, and that there is no continuing threat, Police Commissioner Webb said.

The attack has stunned and horrified a country where acts of mass violence are rare. “Australians will be shocked tonight,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon.

Here’s what you need to know:

The police said the attacker’s motive was unclear, but there were no immediate indications that it was a hate crime. He did not appear to be targeting any specific person, the police said.

The attack happened in Bondi Junction, a busy commercial district in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, a wealthy area near the coast.

Multiple calls about a stabbing began coming from people at the mall, the Westfield Bondi Junction, shortly after 3:30 p.m.

15 minutes ago
Isabella Kwai

Witnesses describe harrowing scenes as shoppers fled or huddled in stores.

Witnesses to the stabbings in a Sydney, Australia, mall on Saturday described a scene of terror as shoppers fled from the knife-wielding man or huddled in stores as panic spread through the shopping center.

Video taken inside the mall showed a man in dark shorts and a dark shirt running at people with a knife. Some of those fleeing from him appeared to be adults holding the hands of young children. One man confronted the attacker on an escalator to try to stop him.

Andrew Reid, a lifeguard, told Sky News Australia that he had been on an errand at Myer, a retailer, when shoppers were told to evacuate. Many of the stores were in lockdown, Mr. Reid said, but after seeing people lying bleeding on the floor, he went to administer first aid.

“There was so much blood,” he said, adding that he had treated one woman who was wounded in her back, and that others trying to help had used cotton T-shirts and other pieces of clothing to stem the bleeding. Another woman he treated had been stabbed in the chest, he said. “She was in a pretty bad way.”

A senior police officer who had been nearby confronted the attacker, and she then fatally shot him, according the police. One witness told the Australian national broadcaster, ABC, that he had heard screaming and followed the police officer who was chasing after the man, and then saw her shoot him.

“If she didn’t shoot him, he would have kept going,” the man said, adding that the officer had administered CPR to the attacker afterward.

One woman who had been at the shopping center complex on Saturday told the national broadcaster that she had been at the gym and then hid in a store after hearing gunshots.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said through tears, adding. “I saw a woman lying on the floor in the Chanel.”

[Holden Fourth]

More victims of a failing and overburdened mental health system?

The police officer was very brave. To be able to unholster and prepare her Glock to fire would have taken time which she had very little of with a man running at her with a knife. My understanding is that police are trained to run away if they don't think they can get their firearm out in time. This would have been a split decision for her.

You also have to remember that she is now a victim herself and once the shock wears off her state of mind will have to be very carefully monitored. My hat goes off to her as she probably saved many more lives.

[Belle]

More victims of a failing and overburdened mental health system?

Yes, Holden, it probably will be. This man was 'known to police'. The police officer who took him out acted decisively and bravely. Surviving victims and their families are in for more misery in the coming days, months and years.

Years ago when governments decided to de-institutionalize the mentally ill they obviously made a calculated risk assessment that, on balance, these patients were better off and could be trusted to take their own meds, etc. My own (late) friend at the ABC was a close friend of the late Anne Deveson (remember her?) and he recounted to me in the 1990s the horror of Anne's son Jonathon (whom she wrote a book about) going on the rampage and trying to kill her!! She sheltered at my friend's house and this saved her life, until her son later killed himself. Anne had been to hell with her son and only came back when he died. My friend and I both questioned the system back then; the lack of police protection and mental health engagement.

I'm not confident an honest assessment of failures in the system will be forthcoming after this tragedy.

[barney]

There will be a large amount of CYA (cover your a*se) going on. I'm just pleased he wasn't a Muslim terrorist - things are bad enough on Muslim-Jewish (and others) tensions right now.

[Lance]

I read about the stabbing in Sydney yesterday. It's shocking. One rarely hears about this kind of thing in Australia. It seems one cannot go out anywhere without fearing something like this. It's happening more and more. My heart goes out to you.

[Belle]

Systemic failures, just as we suspected. This is an absolute tragedy all round; for the victims, the survivors, the rampaging killer and his family. It is doomed to be repeated because, as my son says, "you need to understand the system will not protect you".

What made him make that statement? He was involved with his wife nearly 4 years ago in trying to help a wider family member of hers who had descended into mental health hell. He'd locked himself in his rental house, had guns and probably knives (a sporting shooter who also belonged to a club). They begged the police to act, to take him to a public hospital, so they turned up at his house on a 'welfare call'. Three times. Surprisingly he opened the front door on the first call and was suddenly cheerful. My daughter-in-law cautioned about this change of behaviour but the officer told her they were 'used to seeing this kind of subterfuge'. When she and my son begged them to remove the weapons (several times over, and supported by other family members) the answer was "there's nothing we can do; he hasn't broken the law". My daughter-in-law (an outspoken lawyer) then asked one policeman his name, which he promptly gave. She replied, "well, Officer ****, when this goes wrong your name will be written all over it; do you want that?". He and his colleagues immediately reacted to this and, after a call back to a superior at the station, finally removed the offending weapons.

Living on the edge: mental illness stalked Bondi killer Joel Cauchi
By SARAH ELKS ,
The last time neighbours saw Joel Cauchi at his childhood home in Toowoomba, he was banging on the door shouting to be let in.

His parents, Andrew and ­Michele Cauchi, either weren’t home or deliberately weren’t ­answering.

That was just two months ago, and followed a previous complaint from Cauchi to police about his ­father “stealing” his collection of knives.

What triggered Cauchi to subsequently go on a stabbing rampage, killing six innocent people and seriously injuring many ­others including a baby at a Bondi shopping centre on Saturday, will be a central question for police in the days ahead.

But what is known is that in ­recent years his mental health had been deteriorating. Sleeping in a car at times, he had developed a fixation with knives, wanted to meet people in Sydney to shoot guns, and according to internet searches had been advertising as a male escort.

There were no criminal charges against him in his home state of Queensland, but there were ­repeated run-ins with police, who say the interactions suggest his mental health declined in the past four to five years.

On one occasion early last year, he complained to officers about his father stealing his knives, but police believed his parents took them for his own and others’ safety, according to sources familiar with the Bondi investigation.

Cauchi, 40, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in year 12 at Toowoomba’s Harristown State High School in 2000, health sources told The Australian.

He received clinical treatment through Queensland Health for the next 12 years, before being ­discharged into the care of his Toowoomba GP and a private psychiatrist.

It’s understood the transfer ­decision was made after he completed a degree at the University of Southern Queensland, and that authorities had assessed him as being high functioning.

A source said while there had been some interactions with police, Cauchi showed no signs of serious violence.

He had grown up in a pretty but run-down gabled timber weatherboard cottage, with an overgrown cottage garden bursting with flowers in full bloom.

Toowoomba’s hardluck suburb of Rockville, in the mountaintop city west of Brisbane, is picturesque but rough.

A nearby street is known locally as “DV alley’’ for the regular domestic violence call-outs to police.

A neighbour, who asked not to be named but has lived on the street since the 1960s, has known the Cauchis for decades.

She recalls a concerned ­Michele Cauchi confiding with her recently about how worried she was about her son.

“I think he’s been a worry for a long time. The last time I saw him was a couple of months back, he was banging on the front door but no one opened it, no one ­answered,” the neighbour said.

She said Andrew and Michele Cauchi were good people, giving an example of Andrew taking meals to an elderly neighbour who had broken a collarbone.

But Andrew could also “just start preaching at you”, she said.

The Cauchis’ children Joel and Jasmine were born when they were living in the Rockville home, and Michele drove them to school every day, the neighbour said.

They were a deeply religious family, and had been members of the Toowoomba City Church, founded by Ian Shelton.

Mr Shelton, who has since ­retired, remembers the family from decades ago.

He said it was true that Cauchi had mental health issues, but “none of us would have expected him to do that”.

In recent years, but before the pandemic, Cauchi had briefly ­attended the Victory Life Church in Toowoomba, a pastor there confirmed. She said he was in the church but not for very long, and left little impression on her.

“He came and went, he didn’t seem very committed,” she said.

A woman who briefly dated Cauchi after meeting him in a Toowoomba church four years ago says she had been put off by his odd behaviour at the time.

“We went to the same church. He always sat by himself,” said the mother of five, who asked to be identified only as Lulu.

“I asked him out and we went on a couple of coffee dates. But he always had this compulsion – he always carried hand sanitiser, this is before Covid, and he was always sanitising his hands, wiping the table down of all the crumbs and things like that. I sort of just ­decided he was a bit strange.”

Not long after, Cauchi moved to Brisbane, she said.

Michael Moran lived with Cauchi for six months in Carina, Brisbane, during the “Covid period”, and is now trying to comprehend how his former flatmate could have become one of the nation’s worst mass killers.

“I don’t feel he would have done anything in a normal situation, so my thought is that his mental illness got worse or somehow he got involved with drugs,” Mr Moran said.

“I never felt like he would have threatened or hurt me.”

Josephine Eileen Everson, who dated Cauchi for a few months in 2022 in Toowoomba, was also struggling to reconcile how the “sweet and kind” man she knew could become a ruthless killer.

Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Roger Lowe said investigators would focus on “what changed” and how a man who had “for a number of years functioned in society” could commit such a horrific crime.

There was no indication the ­attack had any “political focus, any ideology or religious motivation”, he said.

There was also no previous history to explain his apparent targeting of women in his 15-minute killing spree, in which five of the six dead were females.

Cauchi had never been found to be in “possession of knives in a manner that’s unlawful”, he said.

Mr Lowe added that Cauchi had been living an “itinerant lifestyle” sleeping in cars and backpackers hostels, moving between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

The last time he reached out to his family was last month and he would sometimes text his mother with an update as to where he was.

In response to questions about whether Cauchi was obsessed with knives and if he had ever called the police because his family had confiscated weapons from him, Mr Lowe said they were investigating a 2023 event concerning family members.

Cauchi’s family said in a statement on Sunday that their “thoughts and prayers” were with the families and friends of victims.

The policewoman who shot and killed him was “only doing her job to protect others and we hope she is coping alright”, the statement read.

“Joel’s actions were truly horrific, and we are still trying to comprehend what has happened. He has battled with mental health ­issues since he was a teenager,” it read.

Mr Lowe said the family had contacted police after it saw ­images of the killer in the media, reporting that it believed the person to be its son.

“Whilst the investigations are in their infancy … I can say that the man has never been arrested by police in Queensland nor has he been charged with any criminal ­offence,” he said.

“He has been in contact with the police, primarily in the last four to five years, and that would be the most contact we have had with him.

“We have people in our society who suffer from mental health, they go about their days without trouble, without causing these types of crimes.

“Mental health in society is not a crime. We do not run an intelligence regime on persons who suffer from mental health.

What we know about the Westfield killer

He was a former teaching student

Thought to have moved to NSW in March, but was a regular visitor to the state
Stopped by Sydney police in The Rocks in June 2023. They believed he was acting suspiciously and searched him but had no reason to detain him
Known to QLD police for mental health issues, but not arrested or charged
Suffered from mental health issues from age 17; diagnosed with schizophrenia
Advertised as a male escort online, calling himself "athletic, good looking"
Posted on Facebook on April 8 seeking a surfing buddy at Bondi Beach
“There’s going to be an exchange of information if a person were to present such a security risk in society that we would need to monitor that behaviour.”

The last interaction with Queensland police was in December when he was “street-checked” on the Gold Coast.

Much is known about Cauchi already because he frequently posted online, leaving numerous reviews, both positive and negative, about locations ranging from coffee shops to strip clubs.

In October 2020, he wrote on an outdoors-focused Facebook group: “I am looking for groups of people who shoot guns, including handguns, to meet up with, chat with and get to know. Please send me a DM if you can help me out! I live in Brisbane by the way.”

A knife-sharpener vividly remembers the day Cauchi came into his workshop three years ago to have the blades of his hunting knives honed.

“He gave me these two hunting knives and told me that he uses them every day in the house,” the Queensland business owner, who asked not to be named, told The Australian.

“A pig sticker, and the other was another type of hunting knife, probably about eight inches long.”

A pig sticker is a thin, pointed blade with a double edge, about 25cm long, he said.

The business owner said ­Cauchi had a “really blank personality … Nothing angry, distorted, nothing like that,” he said.

“He wasn’t happy, he didn’t smile. He was just very vague, very blank.”

The business owner clarified that Cauchi did not use either of those knives in his rampage on Saturday.

Weeks after he picked up the knives, Cauchi left a scathing ­review, saying his knives had not been sufficiently sharpened.

“I put in two knives (one of which is pretty expensive) to be sharpened and he blunted them both,” Cauchi wrote in the one-star review.

“I made sure that I clearly, ­repeatedly and correctly gave all instructions when I put them in and he blunted them.”

A year ago, he reviewed the Minx Gentlemen’s Club on ­Sydney’s Pitt St, as a “really fun place”.

On the Cauchis’ street, the lawns are neatly mown, and the neighbours know each other.

Their home carries an ornate “welcome” sign next to the front door, but no one was answering on Sunday.