When police inspector Amy Scott arrived at a shopping centre in Sydney, she was on the hunt for a man wielding a large knife and attacking innocent people. She entered the Westfield Bondi Junction without a partner or a bullet-proof vest, overwhelmed by a wave of nausea that replaced her initial fear.
“It was as if I had accepted that I might not make it out alive,” she recounted during her testimony at the New South Wales coroner’s court on Tuesday.
The clock read 3:37 PM on April 13, 2024. Just four minutes earlier, Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old man suffering from schizophrenia, had unleashed a stabbing spree inside the mall, resulting in six fatalities and ten injuries.
Inspector Scott was the first officer to respond to the urgent radio call. She had been driving from Bondi Beach when she heard the operator report multiple stabbings at various locations within the Westfield. “I realized then that this was a serious situation,” she explained to the coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan.
Upon her arrival, she initially planned a coordinated entry with other officers, but was met with a chaotic scene as terrified shoppers fled, shouting, “He’s killing people!”
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, she decided to confront the armed assailant alone. “They’re active, I’m going in,” she communicated over the radio.
During her training for active shooter scenarios, officers were informed that their chances of survival were only 60% to 70% if they were partnered and equipped with protective gear, neither of which applied to her at that moment.
Her only support came from Silas Despreaux and Damien Guerot, two French nationals who had befriended each other in Australia. Upon hearing about the stabbings, they resolved to assist Scott in apprehending the attacker.
Using heavy bollards from a nearby store, they attempted to impede Cauchi’s progress as he ascended an escalator. Scott recalled how the men guided her, and as they approached the top, she readied her firearm, with one of the Frenchmen urging her to stay alert.
“Be prepared; this guy is dangerous,” Guerot warned her.
As she spotted Cauchi a short distance away, she reported, “I’ve got eyes on him and I’m in foot pursuit.” When he halted about 20 meters ahead, she too came to a stop, signaling a nearby mother with a pram to escape before calling out to Cauchi.
He turned and bolted in her direction. “Stop, drop it!” she shouted as she fired three shots, fearing for her life.
Less than six minutes after the attack began, Cauchi lay lifeless outside an art supply store, struck by two bullets while one missed and hit a nearby pot plant.
The inquest into the seven deaths revealed that Cauchi, who had been “extremely unwell,” had fallen through the cracks of the healthcare system and ceased taking his schizophrenia medication five years prior. He developed an obsession with violence and serial killers, leading to a meticulously planned mass stabbing reminiscent of incidents he had researched online.
Earlier that day, after spending the night outdoors near Maroubra Beach, he retrieved his backpack and knife from a storage unit, searched for information on the Columbine shooting, and made his way to Bondi Junction. While waiting in line at a café in the Westfield, he pulled out his knife and, just before 3:33 PM, fatally stabbed Dawn Singleton, a 25-year-old bride shopping for wedding makeup.
In quick succession, he attacked Jade Young, 47, an architect, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, an economics student, along with Ashlee Good, 38, a new mother, Faraz Tahir, 30, and Pikria Darchia, 55.
Good, who was stabbed while shielding her baby, managed to contact her mother-in-law, who was also in the mall, to provide comfort amidst the chaos, as noted by senior counsel Dr. Peggy Dwyer SC.
Young’s daughter used her mother’s phone to alert her father, who was also at the Westfield. On his way to them, he encountered Cauchi and warned others about the knife-wielding attacker before rushing to find his wife.
Initially, it was believed that Cauchi specifically targeted women, as only three of his 16 victims were men. However, this theory was dismissed by Det Chief Insp Andrew Marks, who led the investigation.
“From the onset of his attack, he moved swiftly and seemed to strike at those who were unprepared and unaware of the danger,” Marks testified. “I believe he attacked anyone who happened to be in his path.”.”
Bravery in face of danger
It was clear that the death toll might have been far higher. In 2021, Cauchi had sought and been given initial psychiatric approval for a gun licence – something he did not follow through on, which the court heard was “very, very fortunate”.
The court watched CCTV footage that showed Cauchi, seconds before he was shot, hesitating in front of a man, who appeared to have no idea of the danger he was in.
I don’t even know to this day if they realised,” Scott said from the stand, before recounting, through tears, the bravery of the young officers who had also run towards danger that day – some of whom have not been able to return to work since.
The level of preparedness for an active armed offender, from security alarms to interagency communication and command, is central to the inquest for which the brief of evidence contains some 50 volumes and on which at least 18 barristers are working.
Australia is a country in which mass casualty attacks are rare – the Bondi Junction attack was Sydney’s worst mass murder in more than a decade – and the triage response was perhaps a function of that fact, Dwyer suggested.
On multiple levels, communications issues also hampered responders’ efforts.
The sole operator in Westfield’s security CCTV room had been using the bathroom when the attack began. Its emergency alarm system – which began only after Cauchi was shot dead – was, in Scott’s words, “deafening”. There was confusion around whether Cauchi had acted alone. An police review of CCTV room footage quickly determined there was a single offender – a message that was not passed on to the ambulance commander on site, who ordered all paramedics to leave the scene, albeit after all patients had left the building. Other specialist paramedics did not have ready access to the ballistic PPE needed to work in an active armed offender situation.
An interagency meeting at 5.30pm – about two hours after Cauchi’s attack began – was criticised as being “too late”. Responding, Ch Insp Christopher Whalley, who took initial command of the incident, said that “the scope and magnitude of that incident was quite vast”.