Police have identified Joel Cauchi, 40, as the knifeman who stabbed six shoppers to death at Bondi Junction Westfield on Saturday and injured eight others including a nine-month-old baby before being shot dead by a cop.
NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony said on Sunday that Cauchi, from Queensland, had arrived in Sydney recently. His one interaction with police was a “welfare check” because he was sleeping on the streets.
“We have spoken to his family and we will continue to do so,” he said.
“We know that shortly after coming to Sydney he took possession of a storage facility which has been identified and we have worked through that very small storage facility.
“I said last night, there is still to this point nothing that we have, the information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation, ideology or otherwise.”
A neighbour of Cauchi’s family in Toowoomba told The Daily Telegraph the knifeman was “disturbed”.
“It’s a spin out, he could have done that here,” the man said.
“They seem like a nice family with a nice house but he had schizophrenia growing up.”
Queensland Health confirmed that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2000, the year after he finished high school.
Cauchi also worked as a homosexual prostitute, advertising his services online.
His profiles on several escort websites offered services to both men and women too graphic to publish.
Cauchi roamed through the busy shopping centre in Sydney’s east with a 30cm kitchen knife at about 3.30pm randomly stabbing shoppers, killing five women – including the injured baby’s mother – and one man.
At several points he was confronted by brave bystanders, one who blocked him on an escalator while wielding a bollard, and another who stopped him from pursuing a mother and her two children.
Desperate shoppers threw furniture at him from upper levels in an attempt to stop him, while horrified witnesses watched him stalk through the shopping centre.
Cauchi was eventually shot dead by a lone female police inspector who ran into the Westfield mall after being alerted by witnesses.
“She confronted the offender, who had moved by this stage to level five, as she continued to walk quickly behind him to catch up with him. He turned to face her, raised a knife,” Mr Cooke said on Saturday.
“She discharged a firearm and that person is now deceased.”
The baby is at Sydney Children’s Hospital after undergoing surgery, while the seven other injured victims are at four separate hospitals.
