Bondi stabbings: Sydney takes stock after week of shock and grief

Some stores remain closed and extra security patrol in stab-proof vests as the full horror of the Bondi Junction shopping centre attack comes to light.

A shopper inspects the thousands of floral tributes left at Bondi Junction shopping centre after it was reopened for business on Friday. Picture: Getty Images

First came the screams, loud enough to pierce the hum of Bondi Junction shopping centre, busy on the first weekend of school holidays. Some curious shoppers walked towards the noise, not thinking of danger but wondering which celebrity had just arrived.

Such is the safety net of life in Sydney’s eastern suburbs that unexpected shrieks are more likely to announce some famous actor who’s wandered in from Bondi Beach, 2km away, than warn of the peril of a crazed man with a knife.

Next came the sight of people running. This was no VIP visit or television prank. These people looked desperate, frightened, some were openly sobbing. “Get out, get out, there’s a guy with a knife,” they yelled as they sprinted past shops and cafes.

This sent more people scurrying. Some hit the floor behind shop counters, others were hustled into storage rooms as panicked staff closed security shutters and the shopping centre’s emergency alarm sounded with the warning “evacuate now, evacuate now” as anyone with a phone to hand rang triple-0.

“It looked apocalyptic,’’ business owner Michael Dunkley said in interviews afterwards. “People were saying ‘he’s got a gun, he’s got a knife’. It was just like a movie scene.”

People left hiding in shops were thinking the worst. Is there a bomb? Is there more than one ­attacker? One staffer began calling family to tell them she loved them, and she wasn’t the only one. A young shopper who saw a body in the Chanel store tearfully told the ABC: “I came out of the gym, I was living my life, and then I thought I was going to die.”

A week on from the disaster, a sense of shock still ruffles Sydney. At the shopping centre on Friday security guards in stab-proof vests patrolled the floors as visitors quietly placed flowers or wrote notes of condolence. Some stores remained closed and mental health counsellors were on standby.

Floral tributes at a memorial site during the re-opening of the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre on Friday. Picture: Getty Images

Killer on rampage

NSW Premier Chris Minns said extra police and security would be posted around Bondi, and the state, for as long as necessary. “Not just for the immediate ­security needs but so that people feel confident and safe in their community,’’ he said, acknowledging broader concern not just at this mass murder but the stabbing of a bishop in a southwest Sydney ­attack two days later.

He joined other political leaders in praising the efforts of shoppers who tried to stop Joel Cauchi from his murderous rampage.

Video footage showed 40-year-old Cauchi, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17, walking or strangely trotting through the mall brandishing the 30cm knife. In some clips he seemed disinterested in the men in his path and appeared to seek out women.

Bearded and dressed in a green and gold Kangaroos jersey, he stabbed people in the front and in the back. Shocked shoppers watched people drop in front of them, saw the blood, the knife, this man with the vacant eyes and ­expressionless face, and they ran.

An armed Joel Cauchi continues his rampage as a bystander protects his family. Picture: Nine News

“I froze for a second, couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He was standing over this woman on the ground. I saw the blood … I knew I had to get out of there. It was carnage,’’ one shopper who only wanted to be known as Kylie told The Australian.

One survivor told her family she thought she’d been shoved from behind and didn’t know she’d been knifed until she saw the blood.

Security guards Muhammad Taha and Faraz Tahir, 30, were patrolling level four when they saw people running.

Taha ­believes they were the first to confront Cauchi.

“We went to assess the situation and to save people (when) all of a sudden the guy came out …,’’ Taha told The Australian from his hospital bed where he is being treated for injuries.

Tahir, who arrived in Australia a little more than a year ago as a refugee from Pakistan, confronted him head-on and was fatally stabbed.

“After that he jumped on me. I tried to defend (myself) but got stabbed,’’ Taha said.

Security guard Faraz Tahir was among the first to confront Cauchi. He died of stab wounds at the scene.

Injured and bleeding, he managed to radio the alarm to base as more security guards rushed to help and give CPR to injured shoppers.

By now, more people were running, this time towards the danger.

“I left my wife, I don’t know why, what was I thinking, [but] I wanted to chase the guy down,’’ the businessman Dunkley said.

Victims everywhere

Those following Cauchi’s trail saw a terrible sight. Bodies were strewn on the floor as everyday heroes tried to help with resuscitation or clothing snatched from nearby stores to stem the bleeding.

Bondi Rescue lifeguard Andrew Reid, in the mall to buy a bed, asked for the security shutters in Myer to be lifted so he could get out and help the wounded.

“I just saw a lady that was bleeding really badly and I was like, ‘I’ve got to get down there and help’,”’ he told Sky News.

What he saw next was ­“horrendous”.

“There were multiple victims spread out over 50m.’’

As he went from one patient to the next, he noticed an empty pram and wondered where the baby was. Unbeknown to him, that pram most likely belonged to his friend Ashlee Good, a 38-year-old Sydney osteopath who’d been out shopping with her nine-month-old daughter Harriet.

Ashlee Good, 38, a first-time mother who died in hospital from her wounds.

Helpless mother

Over near the Tommy Hilfiger store a dramatic rescue was under way as two brothers applied compression to the bleeding baby while others tried to helped her stabbed mother.

“The baby got stabbed and, yeah, the mum got stabbed,” one of the rescuers told a Channel 9 news crew moments after leaving the building. “The mum came over with the baby and threw it at me.’’

Her final act was to ensure her baby got the help she was no longer able to provide.

Good later died in hospital, while in a separate hospital lifesaving surgery was carried out on little Harriet who remains in a ­stable condition.

Elsewhere, Sydney architect Jade Young, 47, out shopping with at least one of her two daughters, died at the scene from her wounds.

Sydney architect Jade Young was believed to have been at the shopping centre with one of her daughters.

Dawn Singleton died in the Westfield Bondi Junction massacre. Picture: LinkedIn

Dawn Singleton, 25, the daughter of high-profile businessman John Singleton, had been shopping in Chanel for makeup ahead of her upcoming wedding when she too was killed where she stood.

Artist and mother of two Pikria Darchia, 55, had reportedly met friend for coffee in the mall before she was stabbed, dying at the scene, along with Chinese national Yixuan Cheng, 27, an economics student at University of Sydney who had, moments before, been chatting to her fiance on WeChat.

Five women and one man were killed in the attack and 12 others – nine women, two men and baby Harriet – were taken to various Sydney hospitals.

Pikria Darchia, 55, had met a friend for coffee before she was stabbed to death.

Chinese national Yixuan Cheng, 27, had been chatting with her fiance on WeChat moments before she was slain.

Reliving horror

So many lives ended and changed forever. Everyone in the shopping centre that day felt their world shift. One mother said her daughter – who worked weekends in one of the fashion stores and was ­responsible for corralling shoppers, keeping them quiet, pleading with them to turn their phones off lest they alert Cauchi to their ­location – had barely slept this past week. “She keeps going over and over it. We’re getting some counselling for her.’’

Hair salon owner Bill Mohana said he was “still a bit terrified”, ­returning to work on Friday when the shopping centre reopened.

“All morning, I’ve been picturing what I have to do, I’ve got to walk past where the bodies lay, up the escalator, then go to the salon,” he told Channel 9. “I’m going to be sitting there in the salon remembering everything that happened.’’

The most dramatic scenes from the afternoon of carnage were captured on video: Frenchman Damien Guerot wielding a bollard as he confronted Cauchi on an escalator, and then arming himself with a chair as he chased after police inspector Amy Scott who drew her gun and ordered Cauchi to drop the weapon.

“He came straight at her,’’ said Dunkley, who was among others who joined Scott as backup. “He was expressionless … he did not show any emotion at all,’’ he told radio 4BC. She shot him three times.

Guerot described Cauchi as having empty eyes. “He wasn’t there,’’ he said in one television ­interview. “I’m not going to lie. I was scared. But you cannot just stay away and not do anything. He looked like, just determined to kill people.”

French nationals Damien Guerot, known as ‘Bollard Man’ and his mate Silas Despreaux who confronted the attacker.

For their bravery, the Frenchman, in Australia on a work visa, and Pakistani security guard Taha, here on a graduate visa due to expire in weeks, have been ­offered permanent residency.

“This is again another person who is newly arrived, was here working, and put his life on the line in order to protect Australians who he didn’t know,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“I think that on Saturday we saw some of the best of human character at the same time as we saw such devastating tragedy.”