A new mother was forced to throw her bleeding baby into a stranger’s arms as she tried to escape a rampaging knifeman who murdered her and five others at a shopping mall on Saturday from Sydney, before being shot dead.
Dr Ash Good, a 38-year-old osteopath, was walking through Westfield shopping center in Bondi with her nine-month-old daughter when the attacker, who has not been named, began stabbing people.
The man attacked Good’s daughter in her pram before turning the knife on the mother, the Australian Telegraph reported.
Suffering from several stab wounds, Good tried to save her only child’s life by giving it to passers-by.
Good, described as a “very beautiful girl”, died from her injuries shortly after arriving at St Vincent’s Hospital. Her daughter undergoes surgery for stomach injuries.
“(Good) handed us the baby and said ‘please help, help’,” one of the two brothers at the scene told Channel Nine. “She was bleeding from her head, her face…the baby was bleeding.”
“I was just holding the baby and trying to squeeze him. Same with the mother, (I was) trying to compress the (bleeding),” he told Nine News. “It looked pretty bad.”
“We kept screaming for clothes to help compress and stop the baby’s bleeding,” the other brother said.
The man said he was using shirts to try to stop the flow of blood. “Unfortunately, the mother started having a lot of blood coming out of her mouth.”
Andy Reid, a lifeguard from Bondi, immediately went into rescue mode and went down an escalator to help Good.
“I just saw this empty pram. I have three young children and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” he said.
He also tried to do compressions and was quickly joined by paramedics.
It was reported that Good took refuge with her baby and several others in a Tommy Hilfiger store, with staff locking the doors behind them as the cutler continued his rampage.
Mr Reid said he had witnessed “pretty appalling things” in his 20 years as a lifeguard, but “nothing like” the “cowardly attack” at a shopping center.
“It was carnage,” another witness said, describing how the man suddenly started “stabbing people indiscriminately.”
Good had recently returned to work after maternity leave.
Earlier on Saturday, she posted a video to her Instagram of her nine-month-old smiling and eating a snack in her car seat to the soundtrack of My Girl by The Temptations.
She posted on LinkedIn a month ago how much she loved being a new mom.
“I haven’t lost sight of what a privilege it is to become a parent. And then being able to have extra time outside of work to spend with your child… that’s very special.
His father, Kerry Good, is a former Australian rules football great who played for North Melbourne in the VFL from the late 1970s.
Laura Jayes, presenter of the Australian channel Sky News, who reported on the scene, paid tribute to her friend live on air.
“She was so smart. She was an athlete, she was smart, and then she found the love of her life and had a baby late in life and it was her miracle baby,” she said.
Miracle baby
“A mother would never hand over her baby unless she had to and it was a desperate, desperate time. There you go,” she said.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb told a news conference: “The last update I had was that (the baby) had had surgery and he is too early to really say it. But it’s horrible.
The killings at the crowded and hugely popular shopping center near the popular Bondi Beach left five women and one man dead and eight injured.
Police have ruled out terrorism as a motive if the suspect is positively identified as the 40-year-old man they believe him to be.
“He is known to law enforcement but we are waiting to officially identify him,” Commissioner Webb said of the lone attacker.
She added: “Let me assure you that we are satisfied that there is no ongoing risk and that we are dealing with a person who is now deceased. »
He was eventually killed by a policewoman who was nearby.
“She’s definitely a hero.” There is no doubt that her action saved lives,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
“For all of us this evening, the devastating scenes at Bondi Junction are beyond words or comprehension,” he added.
The King said he and the Queen were “utterly shocked and horrified” by the “senseless attack” in Sydney and that “their hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who were so brutally killed”.
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected, including the loved ones of the missing and the heroic first responders who risked their own lives to save others,” the Prince and Princess of Wales said.
We are shocked and saddened by the terrible events in Sydney earlier today. Our thoughts are with everyone affected, including the loved ones of the missing and the heroic first responders who risked their own lives to save others. BATHROOM
– The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) April 13, 2024
Australia was shocked by this rare outbreak of violence. The country adopted strict gun laws after a man killed 35 people and injured 23 others in 1996 in Tasmania.
“(The attacker) walked very calmly as if he were eating ice cream in a park. And then he went up the escalators… and probably within a minute we heard three gunshots,” another witness told the TV station.
“They just said run, run, run – someone’s been stabbed.”
Several other people intervened to try to stop the attacker and help the injured.
Footage posted online showed a shopper on an escalator confronting the attacker with a bollard. The man was hailed on social media as a “brave Australian”.
“I saw this guy fighting with the killer,” said Rashdan Aqashah, 19, who worked at the COS clothing store.
A manager at a luggage storage facility at the center said he saw the attacker stab a woman and saw the bodies of four people on the ground, including two security guards.
Yohan François Philip, 29, said a woman fleeing the attacker ran to his store, “knocked on the door and said let me in.”
He added: “As I let her in, the attacker came up behind her with a knife and I saw him, along with the other customers in the store, locked in with us. So we quickly lured him in, locked the door, he was arrested. and we realized he had just stabbed two security guards.
“Then he ran towards the corner of the luggage room, towards the premium section, and he stabbed a woman, which I saw happen right in front of me.”
Carlos Ferras, 32, was with his girlfriend when he saw a crowd running towards him.
He said: “I started looking at the crowd to try and understand the commotion and very quickly realized there was a guy following them with a fairly long knife.
Mr Ferras, a Sydney-based software engineer, added: “I took my daughter and walked her towards the entrance of the mall while keeping an eye on the guy and that’s when- where I saw him stab a lady – he almost cornered the guy. a full knife in the stomach.
“We got through it but outside it was as crazy as inside, people were running in all directions,” he added. “I felt helpless, I had the guy in front of me, alone, I saw him take someone else’s life, and I didn’t do it.” I am not capable of doing anything.
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