The attack on a man at a busy shopping center on Saturday night killed five people and injured a child in SYDNEY
SYDNEY — A man stabbed five people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. A small child was one of several people that were injured in the attack.
Cooke said he believed that the suspect acted alone, and he was “content that there is no continuing threat.” He said that officials were not aware who the person was. “This is quite raw,” he said, and a “lengthy and precise” investigation was just beginning.
He said there was “nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or any ideology.” He denied that officials were ruling out terrorism.
A 24-hour man and a woman have been killed in the Adelaide shopping centre since the Saturday attack, and police are investigating the attacker’s mental health
He said they didn’t know what to do after they heard a shot. “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.”
Ordinary Australians are seen putting themselves in harm’s way to help their fellow citizens. That bravery was quite extraordinary that we saw yesterday,” he added.
The inspector ran into danger by herself without thinking about the risks to herself, he said.
The attack at the shopping center, one of the country’s busiest and which was a hub of activity on a particularly warm fall afternoon, began around 3:10 p.m. and police were swiftly called.
A man and a woman are dead and 12 other people, including a 9-month-old child, are in hospital.
“There is still, to this point… He said that there was no evidence that this was driven by any particular motivation, nor did we have any intelligence that would suggest that.
“We are continuing to work through the profiling of the offender but very clearly to us at this stage it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved,” Cooke said.
An assistant cop said at the media conference on Sunday that Cauchi had mental health issues, and that police were not treating the attack as terrorism-related.
New South Wales Police said on Sunday they believed the man responsible for the Saturday attack in the shopping centre to be 40 years old and from the eastern suburbs.