SYDNEY — Police have recognized the assailant who stabbed six individuals to dying at a busy Sydney buying heart earlier than he was fatally shot by a police officer.
New South Wales Police stated Sunday that Joel Cauchi, 40, was chargeable for the Saturday afternoon assault on the Westfield Purchasing 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 will seem that that is associated to the psychological well being of the person concerned,” Cooke stated.
“There’s nonetheless, so far… no data we have now obtained, no proof we have now recovered, no intelligence that we have now gathered that may counsel that this was pushed by any explicit motivation – ideology or in any other case,” he added.
The assault on the buying heart, one of many nation’s busiest and which was a hub of exercise on a very warm fall afternoon, started round 3:10 p.m. and police have been swiftly referred to 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 throughout the assault.
Two of the six victims have been from abroad and don’t have any household in Australia, Cooke stated on Sunday.
Video footage shared on-line seems to point out many individuals fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi walked by means of the buying heart and lunging at individuals.
Different footage exhibits a person confronting the attacker on an escalator within the buying heart by holding what seemed to be a submit in 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 stated the officer was “actually a hero” who’s actions had saved many extra lives.
“The great inspector who bumped into hazard by herself and eliminated the risk that was there to others, with out occupied with the dangers to herself,” he stated.
“We additionally see the footage of unusual Australians placing themselves in hurt’s method in an effort to assist their fellow residents. That bravery was fairly extraordinary that we noticed yesterday,” he added.
The buying heart stays closed on Sunday and will likely be an lively crime scene for days, police stated.
