‘Run, run, run’: Chaos at a Sydney mall as 6 people stabbed to death, and the suspect fatally shot
SYDNEY — 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 and not far from the world-famous Bondi Beach.
They said they were not able to name him until a formal identification had taken place but that they weren’t treating the attack as terrorism-related.
The man was shot dead by a 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 attack at the shopping center, one of the country’s busiest and which was a hub of activity on a particularly warm fall afternoon, began around 3:10 p.m. and police were swiftly called.
“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.
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.
