A lady brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday, April 14, 2024, after a number of individuals have been stabbed to dying at a shopping mall Saturday.

Rick Rycroft/AP

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Rick Rycroft/AP

A lady brings flowers to an impromptu memorial at Bondi Junction in Sydney, Sunday, April 14, 2024, after a number of individuals have been stabbed to dying at a shopping mall Saturday.

Rick Rycroft/AP

SYDNEY — Police have recognized the assailant who stabbed six individuals to dying at a busy Sydney purchasing middle earlier than he was fatally shot by a police officer.

New South Wales Police mentioned Sunday that Joel Cauchi, 40, was liable for the Saturday afternoon assault on the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, within the metropolis’s jap suburbs and never removed from the world-famous Bondi Beach.

NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke instructed reporters at a media convention on Sunday that Cauchi suffered from but unspecified psychological well being points and police investigators weren’t treating the assault as terrorism-related.

“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 mentioned.

“There is still, to this point… no 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,” he added.

The assault on the purchasing middle, one of many nation’s busiest and which was a hub of exercise on a very warm fall afternoon, started round 3:10 p.m. and police have been swiftly known as.

Six individuals — 5 ladies and one man, aged between 20 and 55 — have been killed within the assault and 12 others stay in hospital, together with a 9-month-old little one, whose mom died in the course of the assault.

Two of the six victims have been from abroad and haven’t any household in Australia, Cooke mentioned on Sunday.

Video footage shared on-line seems to point out many individuals fleeing as a knife-wielding Cauchi walked by the purchasing middle and lunging at individuals.

Other footage exhibits a person confronting the attacker on an escalator within the purchasing middle by holding what seemed to be a submit in direction of him.

Cauchi was shot lifeless by a lone feminine police officer on the scene.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned the officer was “certainly a hero” who’s actions had saved many extra lives.

“The wonderful inspector who ran into danger by herself and removed the threat that was there to others, without thinking about the risks to herself,” he mentioned.

“We also see the footage of ordinary Australians putting themselves in harm’s way in order to help their fellow citizens. That bravery was quite extraordinary that we saw yesterday,” he added.

The purchasing middle stays closed on Sunday and will likely be an lively crime scene for days, police mentioned.