Stabbing spree at Bondi mall horrific

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Some weekends are best forgotten as they seem to hold nothing positive and as far as the news cycle is concerned, the past one was a classic bleak weekend.

A vicious stabbing spree in a Sydney mall kept many people glued to their televisions from late afternoon on Saturday while social media went into overdrive.

The situation was almost like a Greek tragedy, with its villain the stabber Joel Cauchi and some heroes who opposed him despite the risk. At the head of the latter group was policewoman Inspector Amy Scott who confronted the knife wielder and fatally shot him.

She is being hailed as the hero of the day but there were enough actions by others to show that people were prepared to put their lives at risk, most notably the Frenchman Damian Geurot who with his friend Silas Despreraux confronted Cauchi on an escalator, wielding a bollard.

For most people, the worst part of the tragedy was the death of young mother Ash Good who despite being fatally stabbed, handed her nine- month-old baby over to two brothers as she desperately tried to save it.

The killer was in some ways a victim himself, having suffered from schizophrenia most of his life.

Cauchi had only recently moved to Sydney from Queensland. He was known to police in both states for mental health-related issues, but not criminal matters. He had advertised his services online as a male escort.

At the Westfield Mall in Bondi Cauchi showed confusion, ordering a meal, failing to finish it, not having any money, then returning to the mall to pay before stabbing 18 people — killing six of them, including five women.

The motive for the killings may never be known, New South Wales police say, but the state premier Chris Minns said he seemed to be targeting women — something police said was “an obvious line of inquiry”.

One of the worst aspects of the tragedy is that it happened in a place where people would expect to feel safe. A similar thing happened in this country in a Dunedin supermarket in 2021, when a man stabbed four people.

While people in this part of the world were focused on Sydney, there was widespread concern around the rest of the world when Iran launched a barrage of armed drones and guided missiles on Israel, in retaliation for the bombing of its embassy in Syria two weeks ago.

Little damage was done thanks to Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, but there were fears at what would happen next.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was among many calling for restraint by Israel, but the world will continue to watch the Middle East nervously.