Tim Blair: Sydney will always win when Sydney fights back

The Westfield Bondi Junction massacre wasn’t the first time Sydneysiders spontaneously mobilised to fight evil, writes Tim Blair.

Sydney’s fearlessness was on displaying during the Bondi Junction attack.

“It wasn’t just me,” hero cop Amy Scott told NSW police minister Yasmin Catley on Saturday night.

The pair spoke mere hours after Scott had pursued and eliminated murderous Westfield maniac Joel Cauchi, and the two-decade police veteran wanted to provide credit where it was due.

“There were a whole lot of bystanders assisting and helping people,” she told Catley.

Police Inspector Scott is too modest, but she is also even more of a hero for highlighting the role of her spontaneously-formed civilian support team. From the very outset, Westfield’s rapid response volunteers were committed to ending the evil that invaded their city.

“This bloke walks around the corner, just really casually … and I notice a massive Rambo knife in his hand,” shopper Ryan Bramble told 2GB on Monday.

Police inspector Amy Scott tends to Joel Cauchi after shooting him.

“I look him in the eyes. He looked at me, we were only a few metres apart, but he looked at me and just kept going.”

Cauchi possibly did so because Ryan is male, and the killer seemed intent on attacking female victims. At that point, Inspector Scott arrived – on foot and flat out.

CCTV footage from inside a coffee shop shows Cauchi moving past. Scott next comes into view, running at a great clip.

Then follows Bramble and the team. Cauchi left the dead, dying and injured in his bloody wake, but Sydney was fighting back. Shopkeepers provided sanctuary. Members of the public steeled themselves and became instant paramedics.

And then there were the tradies, Frenchmen Damien Geurot and his mate Silas Despreaux, who took up bollards and blockaded the killer on an escalator.

Yvonne Wineberg was injured during the attack.

“I didn’t know the situation, I didn’t know who he was, I just saw someone doing something crazy stuff,” Geurot told 7News. That’s often when people clear the zone.

But just like the team who’d chased Cauchi through the shopping centre, Geurot and Despreaux went directly towards the threat.

(Incidentally, Cauchi notably took a step backwards when confronted by a man and a bollard. A genuinely crazy person may not have been so suddenly cautious. Refer again to Ryan Bramble’s comment about Cauchi not taking him on.)

It is impossible to calculate how many lives were saved by the combined actions of Inspector Scott and her civilian allies. Let’s put it at “a lot”, and reflect on our great fortune to be protected not only by police but also by random folk in shops.

Men run behind hero police officer Amy Scott (right), with one arming himself with a chair.

A man armed with a bollard confronts knifeman Joel Cauchi. Picture: 9 News

Sydney has shown its collective fearlessness before. In 2019, 20-year-old Mert Ney stabbed Michaela Dunn to death in a Clarence St apartment then attacked York St pedestrian Linda Bo with the same 20cm murder weapon.

Passers-by mobilised immediately, chasing Ney and calling out his location and movements as others joined the hunt. Makeshift weapons were gathered along the way.

They came in handy. By the time police arrived at Ney’s Wynyard Lane capture point, he’d been swatted to the ground with a chair and pinned down with a milk crate.

Bystanders help capture knife-wielding man Mert New in Sydney in 2019.

Ney was pinned down with a milk crate and chairs by members of the public.

Time was when civilians were advised to avoid challenging armed idiots. Bravery, we were told, could get additional innocent people killed.

Which is both true and beside the point. Yes, one or a number of the Westfield responders could have been injured or killed by Joel Cauchi. Yes, they would have been safer outside the shopping centre.

But lives were not only saved by the Westfield team and their attitude of energetic engagement. Lives were enhanced. Amid all of Saturday’s terror and distress, our city was elevated by those who acted so quickly and fearlessly on behalf of their fellow citizens.

Or, as Premier Chris Minns put it: “It has been incredible to see complete strangers jump in, run towards the danger, put their own lives in harm’s way to save someone that they’ve never met before.”

Sadly, we’ll likely need a great deal more of this. As Sydney and other cities suffer downturns in safety and civility, we will need further Westfield volunteers to step up and take a stand.

“Westfield volunteers”, of course, being potentially any of us who is present at a moment of danger and decides to get involved.

The ancient shouldn’t feel left out. As a mate who’s even older than me points out, he’s still able to block a bullet or blade. He just won’t be talking about it much afterwards.