A man began stabbing people at a busy Sydney shopping center on Saturday before he was shot dead, injuring several people, including a small child, police said.
The suspect attacked nine people at Westfield shopping center in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs, before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, the commissioner said Police Deputy Anthony Cooke to reporters. Five of the victims and the suspect died, he said. He had no details on the condition of the injured.
Cooke said he believed the suspect acted alone and was “satisfied there was no ongoing threat.” He added that authorities did not know who the culprit was. “It’s pretty raw,” he said, and a “long and detailed” investigation was only beginning.
He said there was “nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or ideology.” Asked if authorities were ruling out terrorism, he said: “We’re not ruling out anything. »
Cooke said the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him shortly after arriving at the scene, “saving the lives of many people.”
The video showed numerous ambulances and police cars around the mall, as well as people running out.
Paramedics treated patients at the scene.
Witness Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the channel he took refuge in a store during the incident.
“And all of a sudden we heard a gunshot or maybe two gunshots and we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Then the very knowledgeable store person took us to the back where the store can be locked. She then locked the store, then she let us through the back and now we’re outside.
NBC Chicago
