A Sydney police officer faced a mass assassin. Her backup used to be a wood worker and building employee wielding bollards

When police inspector Amy Scott entered a Sydney buying groceries centre in pursuit of a person who used to be stabbing folks with a big knife, she did so and not using a spouse or a bullet-proof vest. Fear, she mentioned, made manner for nausea.

“Because, in my head, I had resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die”, she informed the New South Wales coroner’s courtroom on Tuesday.

It used to be 3.37pm on 13 April 2024. Four mins previous, Joel Cauchi, 40, who had schizophrenia, had begun a stabbing rampage throughout the Westfield Bondi Junction buying groceries mall, killing six folks and injuring 10 extra.

The inspector used to be the primary police unit to answer the preliminary radio call-out. She have been using her police automotive from Bondi seashore.

“I remember the radio operator said … ‘We’re getting multiple calls, multiple stabbings, multiple locations at Bondi Junction Westfield.’ I knew right then that it was very real,” she informed the state coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan.

When she arrived on the Westfield, her preliminary plan used to be to execute a “dynamic entry”, with different officials coming into the centre at more than one issues. But operating from the buying groceries centre had been folks screaming: “He’s killing people, he’s hurting people.”

She informed Lidcombe coroner’s courtroom she then knew she used to be coping with an lively armed wrongdoer. “They’re active, I’m going in”, she radioed.

In her lively armed wrongdoer coaching, officials had been informed that they had a 60% to 70% probability of non-survival “and that is if you are partnered up and vested up, and I was neither of those,” Scott mentioned.

Instead, as makeshift backup she had Silas Despreaux and Damien Guerot – two French nationals who had change into buddies since transferring to Australia.

Guerot arrived in Australia to be told English about 10 years in the past and is now a wood worker. Despreaux, who arrived seven years in the past, is a building employee. When they heard a person used to be stabbing folks, Despreaux informed Guerot: “Let’s go catch him.”

They attempted to prevent Cauchi the usage of heavy bollards from a clothes shop, throwing them down an escalator as he moved up it against them.

Scott informed the courtroom that the lads informed her which technique to cross. On the best way up an escalator to search out Cauchi, she unclipped her gun and some of the Frenchmen informed her: “You’re on your own [without other police], we’re coming with you.”

Guerot informed Scott: “It’s a big situation. You have to have your gun ready because this guy is dangerous.”

A brief distance from the highest of the escalator and with the lads in the back of her, she noticed Cauchi.

“I’ve got eyes on him … and I’m in foot pursuit,” she radioed.

When he stopped about 20 metres forward of her, she stopped as neatly. She silently signalled to a mom with a pram, hiding within sight, to run, then referred to as out “mate” to get Cauchi’s consideration.

He grew to become against her and began sprinting. Shouting “stop, drop it”, she fired thrice. As she pulled the cause, she informed the courtroom that she concept “that he was going to kill me”.

Less than six mins after his rampage started, Cauchi lay immobile outdoor an artwork and craft store. Two of the bullets had hit him; one overlooked and struck a pot plant.

Fixation on knives and serial killers

In the primary week of a five-week coronial inquest into the seven deaths, the courtroom heard how the “extremely unwell” guy from Queensland slipped during the healthcare internet and stopped taking drugs for his schizophrenia 5 years previous. Cauchi advanced a fixation on violence, knives and serial killers and with some “rudimentary planning”, inflicted a mass stabbing very similar to the ones he had looked for on-line.

That morning, after drowsing tough close to Maroubra seashore, he picked up his backpack and knife from his rented garage locker, searched Reddit for accounts of the Columbine college capturing, then made his technique to Bondi Junction. There, whilst status in a queue at a restaurant within the sprawling Westfield buying groceries centre, he took his knife from his bag and, simply prior to 3.33pm, fatally stabbed Dawn Singleton. The 25-year-old bride have been purchasing for wedding ceremony make-up.

Five seconds later, he stabbed Jade Young, 47, an architect, as soon as, as she stood beside her daughter. She died inside mins. He subsequent fatally stabbed an economics pupil, Yixuan Cheng, 27, then new mom Ashlee Good, 38, a safety guard, Faraz Tahir, 30, and Pikria Darchia, 55.

After being stabbed whilst protective her child, Good used to be in a position to touch her partner’s mother who used to be additionally in Westfield. She “made her way to assist … and was there to comfort her and her granddaughter in the midst of that fear”, the senior recommend helping, Dr Peggy Dwyer SC, mentioned.

Young’s daughter used her loss of life mom’s telephone to name her father, who used to be additionally at Westfield. On his technique to them, he encountered the attacker and “warned others that Mr Cauchi had a knife before running to find his wife”, the courtroom heard.

An early assumption used to be that Cauchi centered ladies: of his 16 sufferers, simply 3 had been males. But that idea used to be debunked by way of Det Chief Insp Andrew Marks, the police officer in control of the investigation.

“From the start of his attack, he moved very quickly and he appeared to attack people that were not ready, [who] didn’t know what was happening,” Marks mentioned in courtroom. “I just believe that whoever was in his way … is who he attacked.”

Bravery in face of risk

It used to be transparent that the demise toll may were some distance upper. In 2021, Cauchi had sought and been given preliminary psychiatric acclaim for a gun licence – one thing he didn’t observe thru on, which the courtroom heard used to be “very, very fortunate”.

The courtroom watched CCTV photos that confirmed Cauchi, seconds prior to he used to be shot, hesitating in entrance of a person, who looked as if it would do not know of the risk he used to be in.

“I don’t even know to this day if they realised,” Scott mentioned from the stand, prior to recounting, thru tears, the bravery of the younger officials who had additionally run against risk that day – a few of whom have now not been in a position to go back to paintings since.

The degree of preparedness for an lively armed wrongdoer, from safety alarms to interagency conversation and command, is central to the inquest for which the transient of proof comprises some 50 volumes and on which a minimum of 18 barristers are operating.

Australia is a rustic by which mass casualty assaults are uncommon – the Bondi Junction assault used to be Sydney’s worst mass homicide in additional than a decade – and the triage reaction used to be in all probability a serve as of that truth, Dwyer advised.

On more than one ranges, communications problems additionally hampered responders’ efforts.

The sole operator in Westfield’s safety CCTV room have been the usage of the toilet when the assault started. Its emergency alarm gadget – which started best after Cauchi used to be shot lifeless – used to be, in Scott’s phrases, “deafening”. There used to be confusion round whether or not Cauchi had acted on my own. An police evaluation of CCTV room photos temporarily made up our minds there used to be a unmarried wrongdoer – a message that used to be now not handed directly to the ambulance commander on web site, who ordered all paramedics to go away the scene, albeit in any case sufferers had left the development. Other specialist paramedics didn’t have able get entry to to the ballistic PPE had to paintings in an lively armed wrongdoer state of affairs.

An interagency assembly at 5.30pm – about two hours after Cauchi’s assault started – used to be criticised as being “too late”. Responding, Ch Insp Christopher Whalley, who took preliminary command of the incident, mentioned that “the scope and magnitude of that incident was quite vast”.

Deep grief

Multiple sufferers unfold over 3 flooring of the large mall, blended with the sheer choice of folks there on that atypical Saturday – to not point out its infamously maze-like format – would have added to the concern and chaos that temporarily descended.

Dwyer’s opening deal with led what has change into a theme of the inquest: each and every witness, and lots of the barristers, have begun their phrases with condolences to these affected. Injuries were said as being each bodily and mental.

“The grief of the families who are impacted is raw and deep … and the extent of their loss is truly unfathomable for the rest of us. The inquest is a huge strain on their emotional reserves,” Dwyer mentioned.

As neatly as many witnesses, the state coroner, too, used to be affected.

On Tuesday, O’Sullivan stopped lawsuits after Whalley used to be triumph over with emotion when recalling how, past due within the night of 13 April, a staff of younger cops had now not sought after to go away the aspect of a deceased sufferer.

“I’m grateful for the break too,” O’Sullivan informed him after a five-minute pause, “because I found what you said very moving.”