Ahmed Ajikobi with Agency reports
A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said, with hundreds fleeing the chaotic scene, many weeping as they carried their children.
Eight people, including a 9-month-old, were injured.
New South Wales police said they believed a 40-year-old man was responsible for the Saturday afternoon attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs. They said they were not able to name him until a formal identification had taken place but that they weren’t currently treating the attack as terrorism-related.
The man was shot dead by a female police inspector after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters.
“This all happened very, very quickly — the officer that was in the vicinity attended on her own, was guided to the location of the offender by people who were in the center,” he said. “She took the actions that she did saving a range of people’s lives.”
The knife attack at the shopping center, which was a hub of activity on a particularly warm fall afternoon, began around 3:10 p.m. and police were called soon after.
“They just said run, run, run — someone’s been stabbed,” one witness told ABC TV in Australia. “(The attacker) was walking really calmly like he was having an ice cream in a park. And then he went up the escalators … and probably within about a minute we heard three gunshots.”
Six of the victims — five women and a man — and the suspect died. The officer conducted CPR on the attacker until the arrival of paramedics, who also worked on the man.
New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said the eight injured people were being treated at hospitals. The baby was in surgery, but it was too early to know the condition, she said.
“We are confident that there is no ongoing risk, and we are dealing with one person who is now deceased,” Webb said in a later briefing. She added: “It’s not a terrorism incident.”
Witnesses were shocked at the rare outburst of violence. Australia enacted strict gun laws after a man killed 35 and wounded another 23 in 1996, in Tasmania.
“I saw all the people running and I didn’t know what was happening,” said Ayush Singh. “I thought it was some people playing a prank or something and after some time I saw a guy with a knife running from the footpath to the cafe where I work.”
He said police arrived quickly and told everyone to stay put.
Singh said he saw the man running just meters (yards) away as he wielded a knife. “I didn’t hear him say anything,” he added. “Just a random guy stabbing people. Mad guy.”
Video footage shared online appears to show a man confronting the attacker on an escalator in the shopping centre by holding a bollard towards him.
Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a store during the incident.
