‘He wanted a girlfriend…he was frustrated out of his brain’

Joel Cauchi’s father says he warned police his son had fascination with combat knives, and believes he may have targeted women because he couldn’t get a girlfriend.

Andrew Cauchi, the father of Joel Cauchi, spoke to the media at the family home in Toowoomba on Monday morning. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Sydney mass murderer Joel Cauchi’s father says he warned police last year his son had schizophrenia and a fascination with combat knives, and believes he may have targeted women because he couldn’t get a girlfriend.

Andrew Cauchi and wife Michele said at their Toowoomba home on Monday they were devastated by their son’s stabbing spree at a Bondi Junction shopping centre that killed six people, as they revealed he had come off medication after reducing it under the supervision of a doctor.

Five of the dead were women, with the majority of the injured also female, and police suspect Cauchi was deliberately targeting women. He was shot dead by a NSW policewoman.

Joel Cauchi stabbed to death five women and a man at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday.

Cauchi’s father said he had done “everything in my power” to help his son as he struggled with his mental illness.

“He is my son, and I am loving a monster. To you he is a monster, to me he was a very sick boy,” Mr Cauchi said.

Joel Cauchi was taken off medication “because he was doing so well, but then he just took off to Brisbane”, and later moved to Sydney, his father added.

Mr Cauchi suspected his son was suicidal and that he may have gone on the rampage to be shot by police.

Asked if there was any reason his son may have ­targeted women, Mr Cauchi said: “Yes, because he wanted a girlfriend and he has no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain.”

Mr Cauchi confirmed The Australian’s weekend report that he had taken his son’s knife collection off him last year.

“He had a fascination with knives, the police, this crime should never have happened, (but) I’m not blaming the police,” he said.

“I took five US Army combat knives off him when I brought him up from Brisbane. I said ‘look, Joel, you are welcome to stay at my place, but you are not going to have these knives here’. I took them off him and it was hell, really hell. He went mental, of course. He exploded. He was angry. He called the police and he accused me of stealing his knives.”

Mass killer Joel Cauchi during his attack, in which police suspect he was targeting women.

Mr Cauchi said he gave the knives to a friend to hold, and thought of giving them back to him. “If you have got a knife and you have a mental illness, someone’s going to trip you one day, and you’re going to go crazy, and what have you got? You have a blooming knife,” he said.

“I told the police, ‘my son had schizophrenia and I’m worried for myself’. I said to my mate: ‘Why do I feel I’m going to be killed in my own house by my own son with a US combat knife?’

“The reason I said that was because I knew what people with a fascination with weapons and have mental illness – which my son has had since he was 17 – can do.”

Floral tributes and condolences from members of the public outside Westfield Bondi Junction after the massacre on the weekend. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Mr Cauchi said he was unaware whether police had investigated his son’s possession of combat knives.

“He (Cauchi) was the one doing all the talking, he was accusing me of stealing his knives. I don’t know what the police said to my son, I had no idea,” he said.

Asked if he had a message for his son’s victims, Mr Cauchi said: “I’m extremely sorry, I’m heartbroken for you.

“Look, it is so horrendous that I can’t even explain it.

“You’re trying to get me to give you an intelligent conversation. I can’t do it because I’m just devastated. I love my son.

“I made myself a servant to my son when I found out he had a mental illness. I became his servant. I did everything because I loved that boy.”

Joel Cauchi had been living in his car, and on a recent visit to Toowoomba “he was filthy and I thought he was sleeping on the beach”, his father said.

Cauchi’s mother Michele said: “We don’t know why he did what he did. He was brought up in love. He was a loved child.”

Michele Cauchi, the mother of Joel Cauchi, at the family home in Toowoomba on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

Her son, diagnosed with schizophrenia in year 12 at the age of 17, lived at home until he was 35.

He was medicated, but asked his doctor to reduce it, she said.

“He was in the care of doctors for something like 18 years. He took his medication well and then he asked the doctor if he could come down on it,” Ms Cauchi said.

“She (the doctor) did it over a number of years, very carefully, giving him warnings of what might happen. And then when he came off it … it all lifted from him and he wanted to have a life.

“Anyone who has got a relative with mental illness will understand medication doesn’t make you feel very well.

“There’s a condition with a mental illness called anosognosia where the brain is damaged and it doesn’t tell you’re sick. So if you don’t know you’re sick, why would you take medication?”

After moving to Brisbane “he wasn’t with his doctor anymore”, she said.

Her son “was obviously not in his right mind, he was somehow triggered into psychosis and lost touch with reality”, she said.

“We did what we could for him … we helped him get a degree, we contacted the lecturers, we contacted the university, everybody was very supportive of him, his teachers loved him, he was top of the class. He worked hard.

“He had lots of friends until he got sick, and then if you do any research into mental illness you will know people socially isolate, and they can’t cope with anything.

“I’m just concerned for people, of whom there are many, who have children with a mental illness to contact (mental health support group) Arafmi to get support.”

Queensland Premier Steven Miles said laws to allow police to stop and search people for knives at shopping centres would be introduced to state parliament “very soon”.

Police asked for the extra powers in February after Queensland woman Vyleen White was stabbed to death in front of her six-year-old granddaughter in the carpark of their local shops.

Mr Miles said the Bondi Junction mass murder was a “compelling reason” to expand Jack’s Law – which gives police powers to use metal-detecting wands to search people for ­weapons on public transport and in nightclub precincts – to shopping centres and, potentially, other public ­places.

The Premier said he would be “happy to provide other states with the knowledge and intelligence and assessments that we’ve been able to do on wanding”.

He was not aware if Cauchi ever applied for a gun licence in Queensland, or of any police complaints or reports to Queensland Health to suggest Cauchi had a problem with women.