Westfield Bondi Junction massacre: police investigate whether Joel Cauchi was targeting women

Police searching for a motive that led Joel Cauchi on his murderous rampage will investigate whether he was targeting women, after the attack left six dead and others fighting for their lives.

Bondi Junction massacre victims, clockwise from main: Dawn Singleton, Ashlee Good, Faraz Tahir, Pikria Darchia, Jade Young.

Police searching for a motive that led Joel Cauchi on his murderous rampage through the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre on Saturday will investigate whether he was targeting women, after the horrifying knife attack left six dead and others fighting for their lives.

Five of the six people killed by Cauchi were women and at least eight of the 12 victims in hospital are women.

As the nation reeled from the death toll, authorities ruled out a politically motivated terror attack. The 40-year-old had never been arrested nor charged with a crime but had a history of mental illness and a fascination with knives.

On Sunday, Anthony Albanese signalled a review into the attack but said now was a time for Australians to “wrap our arms around each other”, commending the bravery of the police and shoppers who confronted Cauchi.

The first victim to be identified was osteopath Ashlee Good, 38, who died at St Vincent’s Hospital while doctors were still fighting to save her nine-month-old baby daughter, Harriet, also stabbed in the attack while in her pram.

As Dr Good thrust the bleeding infant into the arms of two strangers, the knifeman turned his ­attack on her. Harriet underwent surgery and was listed in a stable but serious condition.

Dawn Singleton, the daughter of millionaire businessman John Singleton and lawyer Julie Martin, was shopping for make-up for her upcoming wedding to a NSW Police officer when she was stabbed to death.

The 25-year-old had bought her wedding dress last week ahead of marrying childhood sweetheart, Ashley Wildey, one of the officers who responded to the attack.

When the policeman arrived at the shopping centre other officers realised his connection to one of the victims and took him away from the scene.

Architect Jade Young, 47, of Bellevue Hill, a mother of two and member of the Bronte Surf Club, was also killed in the attack. A long time employee of a Double Bay architecture firm, she often worked with heritage buildings in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Refugee Faraz Ahmad Tahir, 30, who was working as a security guard at the Westfield shopping centre was the lone male victim to have been killed.

Mr Tahir, who was originally from Pakistan, was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community of Australia.

Pikria Darchia, 55 originally from Tbilisi in Georgia, was an artist and mother of two who regularly posted detailed portrait sketches of friends and family on social media.

Wearing a green and gold Kangaroos rugby league jersey, Cauchi began his rampage at 3.30pm on Saturday on the busy Westfield shopping centre at Bondi Junction, stabbing shoppers seemingly at random.

Phone camera vision showed one bystander, Frenchman Damien Guerot, confronting Cauchi with a metal bollard as he made his way up an escalator, stopping him from reaching an area where dozens of children were playing.

Retail staff helped shoppers to safety in their stores, barricading themselves behind shutters, until a lone police woman, Inspector Amy Scott, arrived and shot the knife-wielding Cauchi dead as he turned on her.

Inspector Scott has been lauded for her courage in confronting the killer and saving many lives.

“All she said was: ‘Put it down.’ Just once. Then she shot him in the chest and he went down,” one witness said.

Inspector Scott began CPR on Cauchi but he could not be ­revived.

Police in NSW and Queensland have begun tracking Cauchi’s movements in the lead-up to the attack in a bid to establish a motive, with the disproportionate number of women targeted a focus of investigations.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said on Sunday: “That’s an obvious line of inquiry. That (the skewed gender breakdown) is concerning … that will form part of our investigation.”

Cauchi had advertised as a male escort, The Australian revealed on Sunday, offering sexual services online after creating a profile as recently as mid-2023.

In one posting, Cauchi advertised himself as an “athletic good looking 39 year-old-guy”, offering dozens of “closed door” services.

But he had been living an itinerant lifestyle over the past two years, sleeping in vehicles and backpackers hostels, moving between Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney. He returned to Sydney last month from Queensland.

Police believe Cauchi used drugs including methamphetamine and psychedelics, and are understood to have conducted a “welfare check” on him in Sydney late last year.

Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Roger Lowe said police had engaged with Cauchi multiple times over the past five years and the last contact occurred last December when he was “street checked”.

Queensland Police have committed to investigate how a man who had “for a number of years functioned in society” could commit such a horrendous act, but rejected claims they should have been monitoring Cauchi before he went on the stabbing spree.

“We have people in our society who suffer from mental health, they go about their days without trouble, without causing these types of crimes,” Mr Lowe said.

“Mental health in society is not a crime. We do not run an intelligence regime on persons who suffer from mental health.”

In response to questions about whether Cauchi was obsessed with knives and if he had ever called the police because his family had confiscated weapons from him, Mr Lowe said they were investigating a 2023 event concerning family members.

Cauchi’s parents are understood to have frantically contacted police on Saturday, concerned their son was responsible for the Westfield attack.

Anthony Albanese laid flowers outside the Bondi Junction shopping centre on Sunday, walking alongside NSW Premier Chris Minns, who flew back to Sydney that morning, cutting short an overseas holiday.

The Prime Minister praised the nation’s gun laws, observing that the incident might have led to hundreds being killed if the attacker had been armed with an automatic weapon.

“This man wielded a deadly weapon in the form of a knife, but if it was an automatic gun then we would have been speaking about hundreds of deaths,” he said.

“And it is an important reminder of how important it is that we do have strong gun laws in this country.”

Political and community leaders including Wentworth MP Allegra Spender and Coogee MP Marjorie O’Neill stood for a moment of silence this afternoon as they paid their respects to those who had lost their lives. The NSW government will light the Sydney Opera House sails with a black ribbon on Monday night, with Australian and ­Aboriginal flags to be flown at half mast on key landmarks from sunrise.

As shockwaves of the event spread around the globe, world leaders offered condolences with King Charles expressing his horror at the “shocking” and “senseless attack” and praising first responders for their bravery. Prince William and Princess Catherine offered condolences while Pope Francis sent “the assurance of his spiritual closeness to all affected by this senseless tragedy”.

In the confusion that followed the attack, the Seven Network wrongly identified first-year UTS student Benjamin Cohen as the “lone wolf attacker”. The network blamed human error.

Additional reporting: Ellie Dudley, Joanna Panagopoulos, Alexi Demetriadi, Noah Yim