Incredible footage has emerged of a “hero” who stood in the way of a man on a stabbing rampage in Sydney’s busy Bondi Westfield shopping mall in Australia.
The footage, shared on social media, appears to show a man standing at the top of an escalator challenging the attacker with a stand found in the mall.
Briton living in Australia, Anna McGovern, shared the footage on X writing: “This Aussie man took on the armed attacker in Bondi Junction Shopping Centre, Sydney – putting his own safety at risk to save others. He is a hero.”
Reports on social media suggest that a female officer put an end to the rampage by shooting the suspect, although who shot the man is yet to be confirmed by police. Graphic pictures shared online show the female officer standing over the alleged attacker with blood smeared on the floor.
The suspect stabbed nine people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city’s eastern suburbs before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters. Five of the victims and the suspect died, he said. He had no specific details on the condition of the injured.
Cooke said he believed that the suspect acted alone, and he was “content that there is no continuing threat.” He said officials didn’t know who the offender 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.” When asked whether officials were ruling out terrorism, he said: “We’re not ruling anything out.”
Cooke said the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him soon after her arrival on the scene, “saving a range of people’s lives.”
Video showed many ambulances and police cars around the shopping center, and people streaming out.
Paramedics were treating patients at the scene.
Witness Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a store during the incident.
“And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “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.”
