Man helped nine-month-old baby in Bondi Westfield attack

Witnesses tell of horrifying scenes inside suburban mall, including two men who caught a stabbed baby and shoppers running from the path of the armed attacker.

A man tells reporters he helped the 9-month-old baby who is now in hospital following the attack.

Eyewitnesses have described an attacker who killed at least six people in a knife rampage at Bondi’s Westfield shopping centre on Saturday afternoon as a “man on a mission”.

Police believe the Bondi Junction killer, a man aged 40, acted alone and was not motivated by terrorist ideology. He has not been formally identified.

Alison Prior, who was shopping on the centre’s fifth floor with her two daughters, said they saw people running and shouting.

“Someone said, ‘someone’s got a weapon’,” Ms Prior said.

Ms Prior said she looked down towards the floor below, where a man was defending himself with a pole on the escalator going down towards level three.

“A man (coming up) on the escalator was hit by a pole, he stumbled back.

“He dropped something that looked like a knife.”

Ms Prior said she rushed her two daughters away from the scene to a nearby shop.

“From the way he walked, he looked like he was on a mission,” she said.

‘Mum threw her baby to me after attack’

Two brothers say they were forced to come to the rescue after a baby and its mother were stabbed in the attack.

The mother, age 38, died in St Vincent’s hospital soon after arriving in critical condition, and the 9-month-old baby remains in a serious condition Sydney Children’s Hospital.

“The mum came over with the baby and threw it at me, and I was just holding the baby,” the unnamed man told 9News.

#BREAKING: Live interview with man who helped a baby that had been stabbed during the Bondi Westfield attacks earlier today. #9Newspic.twitter.com/W5vilq0FTJ

— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) April 13, 2024

The brothers were out shopping when they saw a man run up to the woman with the baby and stab her.

Together, the two men pulled the victims into a store and urged the staff to close the shutters while they tried to compress the injuries and call emergency services.

“I just helped out, just holding the baby and trying to compress the baby, and same with the mother, trying to compress the blood from stopping [sic] and calling ambulance and police.

“There was a lot of blood on the floor.”

“We just kept yelling out to get some clothes to help us compress and stop the baby bleeding,” he said.

The men said the mother was experiencing excessive blood loss in the shopping centre and was being helped by another woman who tried to stop the bleeding.

The baby is believed to have undergone surgery at St Vincent hospital and is still under medical care.

‘He’s coming, run’

“He’s coming, run” is what Sydney mum Nick Taylor heard alongside her daughter Taylor, and her daughter’s friend Bronte Hamad.

The three shoppers saw hordes of people running, screams, and — rushing down an escalator — people shouting “he’s coming, run”.

“It felt like being in a movie or a news story, you were just hoping you didn’t feel or hear a shot towards you,” Ms Taylor said.

The group ran into Westfield’s Apple store, where apparently the news hadn’t filtered through, and where Ms Taylor and other shoppers told staff to close the shutters.

“My other daughter, Mia, was across the mall in Betty’s Burgers, I didn’t know where she was,” Ms Taylor said, saying she couldn’t contact her daughter while her group hid for safety inside Apple.

Mia, 16, eventually got in contact and let out of the centre, calling an Uber car away out of Bondi.

Police have said they’re content that it was just one attacker and the situation, although fluid in terms of information, is under control at the Westfield.

The death toll of the attack has risen to seven, including a man shot dead by a lone police woman.