Police have identified the attacker who fatally shot a police officer after stabbing six people to death at a crowded Sydney retail mall.
New South Wales Police charged Joel Cauchi, 40, with the attack on Saturday afternoon at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs and close to the renowned Bondi Beach.
At a media conference on Sunday, NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters that Cauchi had specific mental health difficulties, and police detectives were not examining the incident as terrorism-related.
“We are continuing to work through the profiling of the offender, but very clearly to us at this stage, it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved,” Cooke went on to say.
“There is still, to this point, no information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation—ideology or otherwise,” he said.
About 3:10 p.m., the attack on the country’s largest shopping mall, a hub of activity on an unusually warm fall afternoon, began, prompting the dispatch of police.
The incident killed six individuals, five women and one male, ranging in age from 20 to 55, and 12 others are still in the hospital, including a 9-month-old kid whose mother died during the attack.
Cooke said on Sunday that two of the six victims were from overseas and did not have any family in Australia.
Online video footage shows numerous people fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi strode through the retail center and lunged at them.
Another film shows a man confronting the attacker on an escalator in the shopping mall, holding what seems to be a post at him.
A single female police officer on the scene fatally shot Cauchi.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the officer as “certainly a hero” whose actions had saved many more lives.
“The wonderful inspector who ran into danger by herself and removed the threat that was there to others without thinking about the risks to herself,” he went on to say.
“We also see footage of ordinary Australians risking their lives to help their fellow people. “The bravery we witnessed yesterday was quite extraordinary,” he added.
The shopping mall remained closed on Sunday and will be an active crime scene for several days, according to police.
In Britain, the Prince and Princess of Wales said on X that they were “shocked and saddened” by the Sydney stabbings. Prince William and his wife Kate, Australian royals, expressed their sympathy for those affected as well as the “heroic emergency responders who risked their own lives to save others.”
Britain’s King Charles III also took to X, saying he and his wife, Queen Camilla, were “utterly shocked and horrified” by the stabbing.
“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who have been so brutally killed during such a senseless attack,” the pope added.
Pope Francis also expressed his condolences over the “senseless tragedy” in Sydney, extending his “spiritual closeness” to all those impacted and praying for the dead and injured. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, conveyed the message to Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher via telegram.
