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A man stabbed five people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center on Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said.
The attack, which took place at Westfield Shopping Centre at Bondi Junction at around 4pm local time, left several people were injured, including a baby.
The attack was carried out by a single person who started stabbing people at random. He attacked nine people before a police inspector shot him, assistant police commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters.
He said the suspect acted alone and there was “no continuing threat”.
“A man walked into Westfield at Bondi Junction, he left the centre very shortly after and returned,” Mr Cooke said.
“As he moved through the centre he engaged with about nine people. It is clear that during that engagement he caused harm to those people, we believe by stabbing them with a weapon he was carrying.”
“Very clearly a range of reports were made on the incident, police attended promptly. A single unit officer, inspector of police, was nearby, attended, went into the centre directed by a range of people.”
“She confronted the offender who had moved, by this stage, to level five.”
“As she continued to walk quickly behind to catch up with him he turned to face her, raised a knife, she discharged a firearm and that person is now deceased.”
Mr Cooke said police didn’t know who the offender was yet and there was no indication of motivation.
He said there was “nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or any ideology”.
When asked whether police were ruling out terrorism, he said: “We’re not ruling anything out.”
Mr Cooke said the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him soon after her arrival on the scene, “saving a range of people’s lives”.
At least eight people, including the child, were taken to a local hospital, New South Wales Ambulance said in a statement.
“We’ve responded a total of 40 resources to the scene who remain on scene still,” it said . “That included a total of four medical teams.”
“New South Wales Ambulance assessed and transported eight patients to various hospital facilities across Sydney and assessed a total of six patients who have been deemed deceased on scene.”
An eyewitness described the police officer shooting the attacker to state broadcaster ABC.
“If she did not shoot him, he would have kept going, he was on the rampage,” said the man, who did not give his name. “She went over and was giving him CPR. He had a nice big blade on him. He looked like he was on a killing spree.”
Roi Huberman, an ABC sound engineer who also witnessed the attack, told the news network that he took shelter in a store during the incident.
“And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Then the very capable person in the store took us to the back where it can be locked. She then locked the store and then she then let us through the back and now we are out.”
Another witness said he was in a cafe with his two small children when he saw a man “stabbing people indiscriminately”.
ABC News Australia spoke to the witness, who did not want to be identified, and reported: “He saw a bloke in a green shirt start stabbing people indiscriminately, he handed off his kids to his wife who escaped before he started trying to help a woman who had been stabbed outside.”
“He said he saw screaming, screaming and it didn’t seem that long before we heard the boom, boom, boom of the gunshot and we thought and hoped that it was the police. The security guard, he said, was dying 10 metres away.”
“He grabbed towels there, and there were three people dying right around him.”
“It was just carnage, was how he described the situation as it unfolded, he was very much there after he sent his children and his wife to safety.”
“The first responders didn’t realise they were coming in to see multiple critical people, and added the cops were just unreal.”
Additional reporting by agencies
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2024-04-13 09:43:26Z
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