Police have named the person who killed six people with stab wounds at a busy shopping centre in Sydney before being shot and killed by a police officer.
SYDNEY– Police have named the person who killed six people with stab wounds at a busy shopping centre in Sydney before being shot and killed by a police officer.
New South Wales Police said on Sunday that 40-year-old Joel Cauchi was behind the attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon. Bondi Junction is in the eastern parts of Sydney and is close to the famous Bondi Beach.
At a press conference on Sunday, Anthony Cooke, the Assistant Commissioner of Police for NSW, told reporters that Cauchi had mental health problems that hadn’t been mentioned and that police weren’t thinking the attack was connected to terrorism.
“We are still working on profiling the offender, but at this point it seems very clear to us that this has something to do with the mental health of the person involved,” Cooke said.
“At this point, there is still…no information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, and no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was done for any reason, ideological or not,” he said.
The attack started at 3:10 p.m. at one of the biggest shopping centres in the country. It was a hub of activity on a very warm autumn afternoon. Police were quickly called.
Five women and one man, aged 20 to 55, were killed in the attack, and 12 people are still in the hospital. One of them is a 9-month-old baby whose mother died in the attack.
Cooke said on Sunday that two of the six deaths were from outside of Australia and did not have any family in Australia.
Online videos seem to show a lot of people running away as Cauchi walks through the shopping centre with a knife in his hand and lunges at people.
In another video, a man talks to the attacker while riding an elevator in the shopping centre while holding what looks like a post up to him.
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One woman police officer shot and killed Cauchi at the scene.
PM Anthony Albanese told reporters on Sunday that the officer was “certainly a hero” whose acts had saved many more lives.
He said, “The wonderful inspector who put herself in danger by herself and took away the threat that was there for others, without thinking about the risks to herself.”
People from all over Australia put themselves in danger to help their fellow citizens, as seen on video. “That bravery we saw yesterday was really amazing,” he said.
The shopping centre is closed on Sunday, and cops say it will be a crime scene for days.
