Quick action ‘could have saved lives’ in mass stabbing
Adelaide Lang |
Lives could have been saved and injuries prevented if a competent security employee saw the first blow in a shopping centre stabbing spree and sounded an immediate alarm, an inquest has been told.
Joel Cauchi, 40, was experiencing psychotic symptoms and armed with a knife in April 2024 when he killed six people and injured 10 others, including a nine-month-old baby.
Dawn Singleton, 25, Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Pikria Darchia, 55, Yixuan Cheng, 27, and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, died in the unprovoked attack.
It was not until two minutes after Cauchi was fatally shot by Inspector Amy Scott that an emergency evacuation alarm was activated throughout the Westfield Bondi Junction centre.
It was far too late and the wrong alert for an active armed offender scenario, the families of the victims argued in their submissions to an inquest into the tragedy.
The lone security guard was on a toilet break, leaving the CCTV control room of the shopping centre unmanned when Cauchi stabbed eight people, three of whom would later die.
Training and employment records showed the security guard was not competent enough to have been left unsupervised, the lawyer for the Singleton, Good and Young families said.
“If a competent control room operator had been present and had witnessed the first attack outside the bakery, and took immediate action to issue some sort of warning, then perhaps lives could have been saved and injuries prevented,” Sue Chrysanthou SC argued.
Ms Good was a capable person who had been in a lift and could have taken evasive action if an alert had been activated after Ms Singleton was fatally attacked, she said.
“She was deprived of that opportunity because of the failings of the shopping centre owner and the failings of the training in relation to the security,” Ms Chrysanthou said.
There were 77 seconds between when a security guard spotted Cauchi and the final victim – Ms Darchia – was stabbed, during which time she could have escaped, her family’s lawyer David Roff told the inquest.
“The extra time that was available. No alarms hit,” he said.
“It’s obvious that would have made a difference to she and to others in the shopping centre.”
But Cauchi deployed his fatal attack within 115 seconds and an alarm could not be sounded in such a short time, according to a lawyer for shopping centre operator Scentre.
“(The active armed responder alert) can be done rapidly but is never going to be instantaneous,” Dean Jordan SC said.
Despite delays, the control room operator did not demonstrate incompetence and mostly discharged her role adequately under an enormous amount of pressure, he argued.
“It could not reasonably have been known (she) would not be competent in responding to those unprecedented attacks,” Mr Jordan said.
It was important to remember that security staff were “not highly trained police operatives or military operatives”, legal counsel for security contractor Glad previously told the inquest.
The family of Mr Tahir said they were “extremely disappointed” in the response from the shopping centre operator and security company.
They had hoped the organisations would take time to reflect but it was in vain because they maintained the control room operator competently did her job on the day, their lawyer said.
There was nothing about the first five minutes that Scentre did correctly, Ms Chrysanthou said, including a bungled triple-zero call by the control room operator.
“Where a company invites masses of people onto its premises for its own commercial benefit, it needs to take the time and spend the money to keep them safe,” she said.
“Regrettably, Glad and Scentre did not do that.”
State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan will consider a suggested recommendation that the NSW government promote an “escape, hide, tell” campaign for active armed offender situations.
She will hand down her findings at a later date.
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AAP
