At 3.33pm the bloody rampage began. By 3.39pm six innocent people lay dead or dying

It’s a late autumn afternoon, and the shelves at Bondi Westfield’s Sourdough Bakery are almost bare. A few patrons linger over coffee and laptops in the fading sun. Two tourists walk past, surveying the remaining croissants. One turns to a nearby customer. “Is this a good bakery?” he asks in a thick Swedish accent.

On the level above, toddlers wrestle and squeal in a padded play gym just near the art and craft store, which is having a sale. Around the corner, near Kmart, is a pastel-coloured children’s dress shop selling sparkly tulle tutus. There’s no one shopping there today; the little ballerinas are busy elsewhere.

Life goes on, even here. Children play, mothers rest, shops sell new season clothes. Tourists wander through the shopping centre without any inkling of the horror that unfolded here a year ago, oblivious to the shadows of grief in its halls.

Dawn Singleton, 25, was queuing at that bakery just after 3.30pm on April 13, 2024, when Joel Cauchi removed a knife from his backpack and killed her. She was the first victim of his apparently indiscriminate stabbing spree, which lasted three minutes, killed six people, injured another 10, and changed countless lives.

Four seconds after he attacked Singleton, Cauchi stabbed Jade Young. Young’s nine-year-old daughter was with her and saw a look of confusion and pain break over her mother’s face before she died. Young’s own mother, Elizabeth, later went back to that spot on level four and lay on the shopping centre tiles, sobbing.

Cauchi’s rampage unfolded so quickly that most of his victims didn’t see him coming. The whole ordeal – from when he first pulled the knife to when he was shot dead by a police inspector – spanned less than six minutes.

Later this month, an inquest into the Bondi tragedy will begin. The coroner will examine whether any intervention could have stopped the murderous rampage perpetrated by Cauchi, a 40-year-old man with escalating mental health challenges and a fascination with knives, and if there were flaws in the response from authorities.

It has only been a year. The grief is deep and raw. Already, there are tensions between loved ones about whether an inquest is too painful; Singleton’s father, advertising executive John Singleton, wants it called off. Others want to persist through the pain – to find answers and to try to stop it from happening again.

“We hope the inquest leads to greater attention on public safety and preventative measures,” Sheraz and Muzafar Tahir, the younger and older brothers of victim Faraz Tahir, a security guard, told the Herald. “People working on the front line, like Faraz, deserve proper support and protective equipment to stay safe and protect others.”

The brothers of murdered security guard Faraz Tahir: “He would want systems that protect those who are unwell and the public.”Credit: Sam Mooy

The inquest will hear that 21 seconds after Cauchi killed Singleton, he stabbed Yixuan Cheng. She was walking between a clothing store and a pyjama shop, treating herself to a shopping trip after a university exam. She had just finished talking to her fiance in China when Cauchi attacked, then ran on through Myer and back towards the bakery.

Just over a minute after he attacked Singleton, Cauchi stabbed Ashlee Good in the back. She turned and saw him at her daughter’s pram. She fought him off, but he stabbed her again – this time in the chest. That wound took her life, but her actions ended up “saving the life of her daughter”, said counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer SC, at an earlier hearing.

Good handed her baby to bystanders, begging them to help. The child, who was just nine months old when her mother died, survived.

Cauchi then stabbed two security guards, friends who had moved to Australia together from Pakistan. One, Tahir – who was on his first day shift – died. “We want the world to remember Faraz as a national hero – a man who made the ultimate sacrifice for others,” said his brothers. “To us, he is a martyr – and a martyr’s memory never fades.”

Less than two minutes after he attacked Singleton, Cauchi stabbed Pikria Darchia, the last person to die – but not the last injured – in the spree. Darchia was a mother and an artist who was born in Georgia in Eastern Europe but who had fallen in love with Sydney’s eastern beaches.

In less than three minutes, 16 people had been stabbed. Cauchi continued to wander the shopping centre and broke into a run when Police Inspector Amy Scott found him, helped by terrified shoppers. She chased him through the halls of level five. Eventually, he stopped and charged back towards Scott.

She told him to stop and to drop his weapon. She drew her firearm. At 3.38 and 40 seconds – less than six minutes after Singleton was stabbed and less than one minute and 20 seconds after Scott arrived at the shopping centre – she pulled the trigger three times. One bullet struck his neck and one his shoulder. Cauchi died outside the art shop near what’s now the children’s playground.

It didn’t take police long to identify Cauchi. His parents, the inquest will hear, recognised their son from the television footage.

For them, it was a horrific end to a long, painful journey. Their son had been diagnosed with significant mental illness, primarily schizophrenia, in his teens. For a decade, he was medicated under the oversight of the public health system, but he moved to a private doctor in 2012. From then, his medication was decreased, and in June 2020, it was stopped entirely.

Over the next few years, his mental health deteriorated. Those decisions will be raked over in the inquest, and his doctors will give evidence.

Inspector Amy Scott in June 2024, receiving the NSW Police Commissioner’s Valour Award.Credit: Kate Geraghty

After the murders, Cauchi’s parents apologised for the actions of their tormented son. “If he was in his right mind, he would be absolutely devastated at what he has done,” said his mother, Michelle, “but he obviously was not in his right mind – he had been triggered into some kind of psychosis and lost touch with reality.”

His father, Andrew, was devastated. He’d dedicated his life to helping his sick son. “This is so horrendous that I can’t even explain it,” he said. “I’m devastated. I love my son … I did everything because I loved that boy.”

Before his killing spree, Cauchi had never been charged by Queensland Police. But they knew of him. When he was caught driving erratically, they learnt of his unmedicated schizophrenia. He called the police to accuse his father of stealing his knives. The officers who went to the Cauchi home were told about his mental health issues, his lack of medication, and the deterioration of his mental state.

Those officers did not believe they could detain him involuntarily under the Mental Health Act but emailed a specialist mental health unit within Queensland Police to raise concerns. No action appears to have been taken, Dwyer said.

In 2023, Cauchi was in Sydney, living rough under the Maroubra Beach Pavilion. Police checked on him once, called by a concerned passerby. The officer, an inexperienced constable, checked his database and saw Cauchi had a warning in relation to knives, mental health, and self-harm. He was searched, but nothing was found.

The inquest will explore a significant issue facing police forces across Australia: the role of police in mental health care. The Mental Health Act stipulates that they should only become involved if they have or are likely to commit an offence or if the patient is a danger to themselves or someone else. And yet, NSW Police are called to a mental health incident every nine minutes.

In 2022, they were called to more than 61,000 incidents involving a mental health emergency in which there was no criminal offence, a 41 per cent increase on 2018. Most experts – police included – believe they’re the wrong people for the job. “The presence of police can escalate a situation and even cause harm,” said Amanda Cohn, a NSW Greens MP who led a parliamentary inquiry into mental health in NSW.

Debate continues about how to address this, but Cohn says resources are desperately needed – another issue that may be raised at the inquest. “[The committee] found that community and outpatient mental health care in NSW was fragmented, reactive and crisis-driven,” she said.

“Things have really gotten worse since we tabled that report [last June], not better.”

The inquiry will also examine how well authorities responded to the emergency at Bondi Westfield.

Ambulances rushed to the scene, but confusion about whether there was a second attacker influenced decisions about how quickly paramedics were allowed near the injured, the inquest will hear. It will also explore the role and response of security guards, many of whom were employed on an ad-hoc basis by a subcontractor of a subcontractor.

Bondi Junction Westfield and streets surrounding were in lockdown as police and ambulance responded to the attack.Credit: Oscar Colman

Brian de Caires, the chief executive of the Australian Security Industry Association, said security guards did not have police powers or weapons. They only had a few weeks of training. Their role was to observe and report, and if something unusual was happening, to alert police and centre management, he said.

Since the Bondi tragedy, many have been given body-worn cameras and stab-resistant vests. “The challenge is ... making sure site inductions are done properly, so [guards] know the layout of say, the shopping centre,” he said.

During the opening address, Dwyer said the inquest would also look at how shoppers were alerted. There was no alarm until a minute after Cauchi was shot and seven minutes after Singleton was attacked.

“It is presently unclear why it took so long for the alarm to sound in circumstances where dozens of people inside Westfield Bondi – including staff – knew there was an armed offender,” she said, including the two injured security guards, one of whom had contacted centre management after he had been stabbed. When the alarm did sound, it was so loud that emergency services could not communicate with each other.

People pay tribute at a memorial set up inside the shopping centre after the attack.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Faraz Tahir’s brothers moved to Australia in the days after the tragedy and will attend the inquest every day. On Wednesday, they visited a mosque on Sydney’s western fringe, where green words towered on a wall above them: love for all, hatred for none.

They hope the findings will increase awareness of mental health needs and put systems in place to prevent such tragedies in future.

“Faraz would ask that mental health issues be taken seriously and that people suffering receive the right care early on. He would want systems that protect both those who are unwell and the broader public,” the brothers said.

If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au) or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 (and see beyondblue.org.au).

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