Police have identified the man responsible for the horrific stabbing attack that left six people dead at a busy Sydney shopping center on Saturday.
The assailant, 40-year-old Joel Cauchi, went on a brutal rampage at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction before being fatally shot by a police officer responding to the scene.
According to New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke, these events unfolded around 3:10 pm local time as Cauchi began indiscriminately stabbing shoppers inside one of the city’s largest malls.
In addition to the six fatalities, which included five women and one man aged 20 to 55, a further 12 people were hospitalized with injuries sustained in the attack, among them a 9-month-old child whose mother was killed.
While the motive remains under investigation, Cooke stated that based on current evidence, authorities do not believe the stabbings were terrorism-related. Instead, police are examining whether mental health issues may have precipitated Cauchi’s actions, describing it as an isolated incident with no known ideological underpinnings.
“At this stage it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved,” Cooke told reporters on Sunday. “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.”
Ultimately, a lone female police officer who responded to the mayhem put an end to Cauchi’s rampage by fatally shooting him. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese commended her “heroic” actions, crediting her quick thinking with preventing further loss of life during the attack.
