SYDNEY (AP) — A man stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. Eight people, including a 9-month-old, were injured in the attack.
The 40-year-old suspect began stabbing people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city’s eastern suburbs, before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters.
Six of the victims — five women and a man — and the suspect died. 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.”
Rick Rycroft / AP
She said police wouldn’t identify the man yet and were still working to determine his motivation.
Cooke said a “lengthy and precise” investigation was just beginning.
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.”
The officer “showed enormous courage and bravery,” Webb said.
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. local time, and police were called soon after.
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. As the attack unfolded, panicked individuals streamed out of the shopping center, many with children in their arms. Paramedics treated injured people at the scene. The shopping center and the surrounding area remains in lockdown as police piece together what went on.
“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.”
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.”
Rick Rycroft / AP
Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered 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.”
In Britain, the Prince and Princess of Wales posted on X that they were “shocked and saddened” by the stabbings in Sydney. Prince William and his wife Kate, who are royals in Australia, said their thoughts were with those affected and the “heroic emergency responders who risked their own lives to save others.”
Britain’s King Charles III also posted on X, saying he and his wife Queen Camilla were “utterly shocked and horrified” by the stabbing.
“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who have been so brutally killed during such a senseless attack,” the king said.
Pope Francis also expressed his sadness at the “senseless tragedy” in Sydney, offering his “spiritual closeness” to all those affected and prayers for the dead and injured. The message was contained in a telegram to Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher and sent by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state.
