A girl brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday, April 14, 2024, after a number of individuals have been stabbed to dying at a shopping mall Saturday.
Rick Rycroft/AP
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Rick Rycroft/AP
A girl brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday, April 14, 2024, after a number of individuals have been stabbed to dying at a shopping mall Saturday.
Rick Rycroft/AP
SYDNEY — Police have recognized the assailant who stabbed six individuals to dying at a busy Sydney purchasing middle earlier than he was fatally shot by a police officer.
New South Wales Police mentioned Sunday that Joel Cauchi, 40, was liable for the Saturday afternoon assault on the Westfield Procuring Centre in Bondi Junction, within the metropolis’s japanese suburbs and never removed from the world-famous Bondi Seashore.
NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke informed reporters at a media convention on Sunday that Cauchi suffered from but unspecified psychological well being points and police investigators weren’t treating the assault as terrorism-related.
“We’re persevering with to work by means of the profiling of the offender however very clearly to us at this stage it might seem that that is associated to the psychological well being of the person concerned,” Cooke mentioned.
“There’s nonetheless, thus far… no info we’ve got acquired, no proof we’ve got recovered, no intelligence that we’ve got gathered that might counsel that this was pushed by any specific motivation – ideology or in any other case,” he added.
The assault on the purchasing middle, one of many nation’s busiest and which was a hub of exercise on a very hot fall afternoon, started round 3:10 p.m. and police have been swiftly known as.
Six individuals — 5 girls and one man, aged between 20 and 55 — have been killed within the assault and 12 others stay in hospital, together with a 9-month-old little one, whose mom died through the assault.
Two of the six victims have been from abroad and don’t have any household in Australia, Cooke mentioned on Sunday.
Video footage shared on-line seems to point out many individuals fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi walked by means of the purchasing middle and lunging at individuals.
Different footage reveals a person confronting the attacker on an escalator within the purchasing middle by holding what seemed to be a publish in the direction of him.
Cauchi was shot lifeless by a lone feminine police officer on the scene.
Chatting with reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned the officer was “definitely a hero” who’s actions had saved many extra lives.
“The great inspector who bumped into hazard by herself and eliminated the menace that was there to others, with out eager about the dangers to herself,” he mentioned.
“We additionally see the footage of peculiar Australians placing themselves in hurt’s manner with a purpose to assist their fellow residents. That bravery was fairly extraordinary that we noticed yesterday,” he added.
The purchasing middle stays closed on Sunday and will probably be an lively crime scene for days, police mentioned.
