The knifeman who rampaged through a crowded Sydney shopping mall on Saturday killing six and gravely wounding a baby girl was a lone drifter obsessed with knives.
Police on Sunday identified Joel Cauchi, an itinerant with a long history of mental instability as the knife-wielding attacker who killed five women and one man after he entered the crowded Westfield shopping centre in Bondi Junction in Sydney’s wealthy east on Saturday.
The majority of the 12 people injured were also female and detectives are investigating why Cauchi, 40, appeared to deliberately target women. Karen Webb, state police commissioner for New South Wales, confirmed on Monday that it was “certainly a line of inquiry”.
Cauchi, from Toowoomba, 78 miles west of Brisbane, had moved to Sydney recently, renting a storage unit in the inner city. He was described by acquaintances as a loner and a week ago posted on a Facebook group seeking a surfing companion to join him for outings at Bondi Beach.
He claimed to have worked as an English tutor online, according to his Facebook page but had also advertised himself as a male escort, describing himself as an “athletic good looking 39-year-old guy” offering dozens of “closed door services”.
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On Sunday, Roger Lowe, Queensland Police’s assistant commissioner, said that Cauchi had never been arrested or charged with a criminal offence in Queensland but was “street checked” by officers in the Gold Coast in December. Lowe said Cauchi was diagnosed with a mental illness when he was 17, describing him as an “itinerant”, often sleeping in a vehicle, and not in regular contact with his family.
Andrew and Michele, Cauchi’s parents, released a statement through the Queensland police saying that their son’s actions were “truly horrific”. “We are absolutely devastated by the traumatic events that occurred in Sydney yesterday,” they said. “Joel’s actions were truly horrific and we are still trying to comprehend what has happened. He has battled with mental health issues since he was a teenager.
“We are in contact with both the New South Wales police force and Queensland Police Service and have no issues with the police officer who shot our son as she was only doing her job to protect others and we hope she is coping all right.”
Police had learnt from the family that Cauchi, who had schizophrenia, had been sleeping in a vehicle or at a backpacker hostel before the attack in Sydney, but was not in regular contact with his parents. Cauchi is said to have had a fixation on knives and his parents were so concerned they previously took them away from him.
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It is understood that his family frantically contacted police fearing that their son was involved in the Bondi attack after seeing early televised reports of the carnage on Saturday during which Cauchi, moving erratically, was filmed.
Detectives are seeking to interview all those who knew Cauchi in an attempt to uncover his motivation. The attacker’s father told reporters he believed that his son might have targeted women because “he wanted a girlfriend, he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain”. Andrew Cauchi added: “I did everything in my power to help my son … To you he is a monster, to me he was a very sick boy.”
Among the six dead victims was Ashlee Good, 38, an osteopath, whom Cauchi killed with a knife as she pushed a pram containing her nine-month old daughter who was also stabbed. Good died later on Saturday night while her daughter remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition.
Another was Dawn Singleton, 25, the daughter of John Singleton, the Australian advertising entrepreneur.
Jade Young, a 40-year-old architect and mother of two, also died as did Faraz Ahmad Tahir, 30, a Pakistani refugee who was working as a security guard in the mall when the attacker struck. Seven others remained in Sydney hospitals on Monday.
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Amy Scott, the Sydney police inspector who was nearby during the attack and confronted the knifeman alone before shooting him dead has been described as a hero by Anthony Albanese, the prime minister. He said that her actions probably saved many lives.
Scott came face to face with the attacker in a Kangaroos rugby league jersey and brandishing a knife as she responded to the fatal stabbings. Witnesses said that Scott had time only to yell “put it down” before the knifeman charged at her. After the man lunged, she fired three shots before administering CPR to the attacker. He died almost instantly on the shopping centre’s fifth floor.
“Amy is content with what she had to do,’’ Kevin Morton, the Police Association of New South Wales chief, said. “I spoke to her last night and again this morning and she said: ‘It was a night with not a lot of sleep.’ ” Morton added: “She knows she has been tagged a hero but to her she was doing her job. I didn’t ask her about the exact incident, because she is yet to be formally interviewed.”
Sydneysiders from across the city gathered outside the shuttered Westfield Bondi Junction centre on Sunday morning , grieving those killed and injured. “I’ve always felt very safe here, like 100 per cent safe,” Ashley, 46, who moved to Australia from the United States about 15 years ago and lives down the road from the centre, said. “It’s a shock, it doesn’t really happen around here.”
A sea of flowers appeared outside the shopping centre — one of Australia’s largest — on Sunday. Maureen Matthews, who has lived in Bondi for 75 years, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on her way to church that the heart and soul of Bondi Junction “had been smashed”.
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A knife-sharpener told the Australian newspaper he vividly remembered when Cauchi came into his workshop three years ago to have the blades of his hunting knives honed. “A pig sticker, and the other was another type of hunting knife, probably about eight inches long,” the business owner said. A “pig sticker” is a thin, pointed blade with a double edge, around 25cm long, commonly used by hunters to slaughter wild boars.
The man said Cauchi had a “really blank” personality. “Nothing angry, distorted, nothing like that,” he said. “He wasn’t happy, he didn’t smile. He was just very vague, very blank.”
Weeks after he picked up the knives, Cauchi left a scathing review, saying that they had not been sufficiently sharpened. “I put in two knives (one of which is pretty expensive) to be sharpened and he blunted them both,” Cauchi wrote in the one-star review.
Cauchi also demonstrated an interest in guns. In 2020 he posted on a Facebook outdoor adventure group that he was looking for “groups of people who shoot guns, including handguns, to meet up with, chat with and get to know”.
