The police have yet to determine a motive for Saturday’s attack, which left six people dead, but said the assailant suffered from mental health problems.
On a perfect mid-autumn day, the scene at the upscale mall in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, was as humdrum as it was idyllic: mothers pushing strollers, gaggles of teenagers being young, families whiling away the weekend afternoon.
But in a matter of minutes, any sense of normalcy was shattered. A mile from the famed Bondi Beach, a knife-wielding attacker stabbed nearly 20 people inside the shopping mall, including a 9-month-old girl. Six of the victims, including the girl’s mother, have died, and about a dozen others were being treated at hospitals. The attacker — whose motives remain unclear — was shot and killed by a police officer.
It was one of the deadliest mass killings in Australia in recent decades and has left many in shock, questioning how a tragedy of this magnitude could occur in a country known for its relative safety.
The police on Sunday were combing through a crime scene spanning several floors of the sprawling Westfield Bondi Junction mall. They were also interviewing hundreds of witnesses to Saturday’s attack, trying to piece together the chronology of a rampage that punctured a sense of security in this wealthy suburb of Australia’s largest city.
Portraits of the victims, all but one of whom were women, began to emerge. They included a first-time mother, a Pakistani security guard who had fled persecution, and a young fashion employee, according to statements from those who knew them.
