The man who fatally stabbed six people in Sydney had mental health problems in the past and there were no indications that the ideology was a motive in the attack at one of the city’s busiest shopping centers, police said Sunday. The attacker, identified by police as Joel Cauchi40, was known to police in the neighboring state of Queensland.
Cauchi’s family recognized and contacted the police on Saturday after seeing news of the murders. “The family, upon seeing the images of the event on television“He thought it might be his son and contacted the authorities,” said Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Roger Lowe.
Witnesses described how Cauchi, dressed in shorts and an Australian National Rugby League shirt, ran through the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre. with a knife, attacking people at random. Some shoppers and staff at the eastern Sydney shopping center tried to stop him and the crowd broke out. took refuge in the tents closed.
“There is at this point, nothing that we have, no information that we have received, no evidence that we have recovered or intelligence that we have gathered that suggests that this was driven by some particular motivationideology or otherwise,” the police clarified.
Cauchi had recently moved to Sydney. Police said she had searched a small warehouse he had recently rented, but found no significant evidence to indicate an attack was coming. Five of the six people murdered were women, and the victim male was security guard from a shopping center, according to police.
Among the people taken to hospital with stab wounds was a nine month old baby, who was in serious but stable condition, police reported Sunday. The baby’s mother, Ashlee Good, passed away in the hospital as a result of his injuries, according to his family in a statement.
Attacks like Saturday’s are rare in Australia, a country of about 26 million people that has some of the strictest firearms and knife laws in the world.