Police officer who killed Bondi Junction stabber had ‘resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die’

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 – day two of the scheduled five-week inquest.

Officer thought she was ‘probably going to die’

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.

She told Lidcombe coroner’s court she then knew she was dealing with an active armed offender.

Scott entered the centre at 3.37pm. Two civilians, Silas Despreaux and Damien Guerot – dubbed “bollard man” after confronting Cauchi on an escalator – directed her.

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. 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. The officer called out “mate” to get Cauchi’s attention. At 3.38pm, she ordered him to drop the knife, and when he started to run at her, fired her gun.

Asked what was going through her mind, 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 … 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 6.5m away, 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 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.

Seeing that he was incapacitated, she flicked the knife away and put him in the recovery position before rendering aid.

Asking if there were other offenders, she 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.

Scott said she felt nauseous as she ran into the shopping centre “because, in my head, I had resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die”.

In active armed offender training, officers were told they had a 60-70% chance of non-survival, “and that is if you are partnered up and vested up, and I was neither of those,” she told the court.

The inspector said in her 2016 training, she dealt with circumstances that forced officers to shift away from a “contain, negotiate” approach to “don’t wait, go”. Scott said she was trained to “stop the killing, stop the dying”.

Through tears, she praised the courage and bravery of fellow police officers who attended that day.

Colleagues, staff and bystanders in the shopping centre had saved lives and put themselves at risk despite being fearful, Scott told the court.

Civilian supporters tell their story

French nationals Despreaux and Guerot also gave evidence on Tuesday.

Despreaux, a construction worker, and Guerot, a carpenter, entered the Westfield together at 3pm on 13 April, the court heard.

The friends saw people running down an escalator and heard a man say: “There’s a man stabbing people.”

“OK, let’s go catch him,” Despreaux told Guerot.

Despreaux said on Tuesday that when looking down from the floor above, he saw a man armed with a knife. Searching for a possible weapon, they grabbed a heavy bollard from a clothing store

Guerot said he watched Cauchi run past a woman and then turn back and stab her.

As Cauchi made his way up an escalator, the two men “screamed” at a woman on the escalator to move away.

Despreaux said: “I knew I needed to stop him even if it meant hurting him.”

He threw the bollard down the escalator, hitting Cauchi on the leg, then Guerot moved into Despreaux’s place.

Guerot said he did not expect Cauchi to get past him, but Cauchi “jumped and got through”. He’d thrown his bollard, which also hit Cauchi, but didn’t stop him.

The friends then ran outside and, when Scott arrived, Guerot told her it was a “big situation”. “Take your gun out, he has a knife, he has stabbed people,” he said.

Court hears details of response timing

Cauchi entered the 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.

The court heard that the first interagency briefing after the incident took place at 5.30pm – and that Scott Wilson, a UK security expert due to give evidence, believed this was “too late”.

Ch Insp Christopher Whalley, who took initial command, responded that the incident’s scope was “vast” and included “challenges or pivots”.

“It’s not to suggest there was a delay in actions being undertaken,” he said on Tuesday.

Whalley said the volume of the emergency alarm – which Scott criticised for hampering communications – “had an impact” on phone calls and radio messaging, “but I don’t believe that it had any lasting effect on the response”.

He told the court that after leaving the incident command post set up immediately after the attack, he walked back through Westfield, past about 25 police officers from Maroubra police station.

When he asked why several were standing close to one of the deceased victims, , one officer told him: “Because I don’t want to leave them alone.”

“It was an incident I’ll not forget,” an emotional Whalley told the court.

Whalley said mental health incidents formed an increasing part of police work, second only to domestic violence

“I think there are opportunities to improve outcomes for people [with mental health issues] and those outcomes might not involve police,” he told the state coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan.