The police officer who shot and killed Joel Cauchi minutes after he had stabbed 16 people in a Sydney shopping centre was “on her own” and believed she was going to be killed, a court has been told.
Six people were killed by 40-year-old Cauchi, who was schizophrenic, at Bondi Junction’s Westfield shopping centre on 13 April 2024.
The first call to the police after the attack began was at 3.34pm, the coronial inquest into the mass stabbing heard on Tuesday.
Insp Amy Scott was the first officer to respond. The call came over her police car radio at 3.35pm. “I remember the radio operator saying ‘We’re getting multiple calls, multiple stabbings, multiple locations at Bondi Junction Westfield’. I knew right then that it was very real.”
Questioned by senior counsel assisting the inquest Peggy Dwyer SC, Scott said when she arrived at the Westfield, her initial plan was to execute a “dynamic entry”, with other officers entering the centre at multiple points.
But the number of people flooding out of the shopping centre forced her to change plan. “There were people yelling out to me,” Scott said on day two of the scheduled five-week inquest.
She told the court she knew she was dealing with an active armed offender.
“I knew that I couldn’t wait any more for my colleagues to arrive and I just had to go in … it was my intention to try to find the threat,” she said at Lidcombe coroners court.
She entered the centre at 3.37pm. Two civilians, Silas Desperaux and Damien Guerot – dubbed “bollard man” after confronting Cauchi on an escalator – directed Scott.
She said on the way up the escalator, one of them tapped her on the back and said: “You’re on your own [without other police], we’re coming with you.”
She told them to stay behind her. “They were wonderful,” she said.
At the top of the escalator, Scott found Cauchi holding a large military knife. At 3.38pm, she ordered him to drop the knife. Using mouth and hand signals, but not wanting to shout within earshot of Cauchi, she directed a woman with a pram – who was hiding behind a large plant pot – to run.
Seconds later, Cauchi began to run towards Scott at speed, who responded by firing her gun. When asked what was going through her mind as she fired, she told the court: “He was going to kill me. In my mind, it was extremely slow. I knew my first shot had hit him, that was because of the jolt of his body, but he continued to come towards me.”
She told him to “stop, drop it”. She “backed up” as Cauchi continued to move towards her, then fired two further shots and Cauchi fell to the ground 6.5 metres away from her, the inquest was told.
Five minutes and 43 seconds had passed since the attack began. Just over a minute passed between Scott’s arrival and the shots being fired.
Scott told the court that she reholstered her weapon and went to Cauchi, who was lying on the knife, but she was unsure whether she had incapacitated him.
“I knew I had to bite the bullet and make sure that weapon was secure,” she said.
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Seeing that he was incapacitated, she flicked the knife away and put him in the recovery position before rendering aid.
She then inquired whether there were other offenders and was told: “That’s him, that’s the guy.”
She said waiting with Cauchi while she checked his pulse “felt like a year”.
One bullet had missed Cauchi and hit the pot plant behind which the mother had been hiding.
Scott was not carrying a Taser and said it would “absolutely not” have been the correct option in the circumstances.
It was “incontrovertible” the inspector’s actions saved lives, Dwyer told the court on Monday.
Cauchi entered Westfield shopping centre shortly after 3.30pm, beginning the attack just before 3.33pm.
After “fidgeting” in line at a bakery, he removed the knife from his backpack and fatally stabbed Dawn Singleton, 25. He then fatally stabbed Jade Young, 47, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, before attacking Ashlee Good, 38, from behind. The court heard that the mother turned and saw him then attacking her nine-month-old baby, who was in a pram. She received another stab wound when she intervened to “undoubtedly” save the life of her infant.
Cauchi immediately continued his attack, killing security guard Faraz Tahir, a 30-year-old Pakistani citizen, then Pikria Darchia, 55.
Also expected to give evidence on Tuesday were Desperaux and Guerot.
In the senior counsel’s opening address on Monday, the court heard that Cauchi had made online searches for serial killers and the Columbine school shooters in the days and hours before the attack.
