A woman brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday April 14, 2024, after several people were stabbed to death at a shopping center on Saturday.
Rick Rycroft/AP
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Rick Rycroft/AP
A woman brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday April 14, 2024, after several people were stabbed to death at a shopping center on Saturday.
Rick Rycroft/AP
SYDNEY — Police have identified the attacker who stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center before being shot dead by a police officer.
New South Wales police said on Sunday that Joel Cauchi, 40, was responsible for Saturday afternoon’s attack at Westfield shopping center in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs and not far from the famous Bondi Beach.
New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters at a news conference on Sunday that Cauchi suffered from as yet unspecified mental health issues and that police investigators were not considering him attack as linked to terrorism.
“We continue to work on profiling the offender, but it seems very clear to us at this point that this is related to the mental health of the person involved,” Cooke said.
“There is still, at this point… no information that we have received, no evidence that we have recovered, no intelligence that we have collected that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation – ideological or otherwise,” he added.
The attack on the shopping center, one of the busiest in the country and which was a center of activity on a particularly hot autumn afternoon, began around 3:10 p.m. and police were quickly called.
Six people – five women and one man, aged 20 to 55 – were killed in the attack and 12 others remain hospitalized, including a 9-month-old child whose mother died in the attack.
Two of the six victims were from overseas and had no family in Australia, Cooke said on Sunday.
Video footage shared online appears to show many people fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi ran through the mall and lunged at people.
Other footage shows a man confronting the attacker on an escalator in the shopping center by handing him what appeared to be a pole.
Cauchi was shot dead by a lone police officer at the scene.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the officer was “certainly a hero” whose actions saved many more lives.
“The wonderful detective who ran into danger on her own and eliminated the threat to others, without thinking about the risks she was taking,” he said.
“We also see images of ordinary Australians putting themselves in harm’s way to help their fellow citizens. The courage we saw yesterday was quite extraordinary,” he added.
The mall remains closed Sunday and will be an active crime scene for several days, police said.
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