A person stabbed 5 individuals to demise at a busy Sydney procuring middle Saturday earlier than he was fatally shot, police mentioned. A number of individuals, together with a small youngster, had been additionally injured within the assault.
The suspect stabbed 9 individuals on the Westfield Buying Centre in Bondi Junction, which is within the metropolis’s japanese suburbs, earlier than a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke informed reporters. 5 of the victims and the suspect died, he mentioned. He had no particular particulars on the situation of the injured.
Cooke mentioned he believed that the suspect acted alone, and he was “content material that there is no such thing as a persevering with menace.” He mentioned officers did not know who the offender was. “That is fairly uncooked,” he mentioned, and a “prolonged and exact” investigation was simply starting.
He mentioned there was “nothing that we’re conscious of on the scene that will point out any motive or any ideology.” When requested whether or not officers had been ruling out terrorism, he mentioned: “We’re not ruling something out.”
Cooke mentioned the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him quickly after her arrival on the scene, “saving a spread of individuals’s lives.”
Video confirmed many ambulances and police automobiles across the procuring middle, and folks streaming out.
Individuals are led out from the Westfield Buying Centre the place a number of individuals had been stabbed in Sydney, Saturday, April 13, 2024. A person stabbed six individuals to demise on the busy Sydney procuring middle Saturday earlier than he was fatally shot, police mentioned. (AP Picture/Rick Rycroft)
Paramedics had been treating sufferers on the scene.
Witness Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, informed the community that he sheltered in a retailer through the incident.
“And all of a sudden we heard a shot or possibly two photographs and we did not know what to do,” he mentioned. “Then the very succesful particular person within the retailer took us to the again the place it may be locked. She then locked the shop after which she then allow us to via the again and now we’re out.”