SYDNEY –
Police have recognized the assailant who stabbed six folks to loss of life at a busy Sydney procuring centre earlier than he was fatally shot by a police officer.
New South Wales Police mentioned 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 advised 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 via the profiling of the offender however very clearly to us at this stage it could seem that that is associated to the psychological well being of the person concerned,” Cooke mentioned.
“There may be nonetheless, thus far… no info we’ve got acquired, no proof we’ve got recovered, no intelligence that we’ve got gathered that may counsel that this was pushed by any specific motivation – ideology or in any other case,” he added.
The assault on the procuring centre, 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 known as.
Six folks, 5 ladies and one man, have been killed within the assault and 12 others have been injured, together with a 9-month-old youngster, whose mom died through the assault.
Two of the six victims have been from abroad and haven’t any household in Australia, Cooke mentioned on Sunday.
Video footage shared on-line seems to point out many individuals fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi walked via the procuring centre and lunging at folks.
Different footage exhibits a person confronting the attacker on an escalator within the procuring centre by holding what seemed to be a publish in direction of him.
Cauchi was shot useless by a lone feminine police officer on the scene.
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb mentioned the officer was doing nicely below the circumstances and will probably be interviewed on Sunday.
“She confirmed monumental braveness and bravado,” Webb mentioned, including different responding police, civilians and workers on the centre had too. “It was an terrible state of affairs … however it might have been a lot worse.”
The procuring centre stays closed on Sunday and will probably be an lively crime scene for days, police mentioned.
