Advertisement
Young Chinese student among 5 women killed in knife attack at Sydney shopping centre
- The last of the six victims of Saturday’s attack was identified on Monday as Yixuan Cheng, a young Chinese woman who was a student
- Police are investigating why Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old man with mental illness, appeared to target women. The only man killed was a security guard
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
5
Australian police said on Monday they are investigating why a 40-year-old man with mental illness appeared to target women as he roamed a Sydney shopping centre with a large knife, killing six people and injuring a dozen more.
Videos shared on social media showed unshaven itinerant Joel Cauchi pursuing mostly female victims as he rampaged through the vast, crowded Westfield shopping complex in Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.
Five of the six victims killed were women, as well as most of those wounded. The last of Cauchi’s six victims was identified on Monday as Yixuan Cheng, a young Chinese woman who was a student.
“The videos speak for themselves don’t they, and that’s certainly a line of inquiry for us,” New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb said.
“That’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives, that that seems to be an area of interest – that the offender had focused on women and avoided men,” she told national broadcaster ABC.
Webb stressed that police could not know what was in the mind of the attacker. “That’s why it’s important now that detectives spend so much time interviewing those who know him.”.
Advertisement