A stabbing incident at a crowded shopping mall in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday afternoon left six people dead and many others injured, with police declaring the incident a serious incident and evacuating the area.
The attacker was shot and killed by a lone police officer who was guided into the mall by people fleeing the scene, police said. The officer was following the knife-wielding man and tried to catch up to him, but he turned toward her and raised his weapon, police said. The officer then fired his weapon, saving lives, NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cook told a news conference.
Assistant Commissioner Cook said the attacker stabbed around nine people as he walked through the shopping center on Saturday afternoon. Emergency responders said eight people were transported to area hospitals. He said some of the injured, including a child, were in critical condition.
He said the attacker acted alone and there was no ongoing threat.
“We found nothing at the scene that would suggest any motive or ideology,” Assistant Chief Cook said during the briefing, noting that the investigation was in its early stages. He added: “We are not ruling anything out.”
Shortly before 4 p.m., authorities received reports of multiple stabbings. Numerous photos and videos on social media showed crowds of people trying to help bleeding victims and others escape the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping center or taking shelter in parts of the mall as alarms sounded. The shutters were closed in some shops.
Frightened shoppers told news crews they huddled in fear in a back room after the initial attack and later heard gunshots ring out.
Video inside the mall shows a man wearing dark shorts and a dark shirt chasing people with a long knife in his right hand. One video showed a man at the top of an escalator trying to stop an attacker from continuing his rampage, while other videos showed bleeding victims on polished tile floors – in some cases as shoppers and police tended to people’s wounds.
Bondi Junction is a busy business district in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. It is an affluent area near the coast. The shopping center is a popular destination for families and teenagers. When it underwent major refurbishment in 2005, Westfield Bondi Junction describe As one of the largest shopping malls in the Southern Hemisphere.
Damien Cave Contributed reporting.
