‘Obvious’ Sydney killer targeted women – Australian police

The man who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre appears to have targeted women, police say.

Joel Cauchi, 40, sent the crowded Westfield Bondi Junction complex into panic on Saturday when he began stabbing people with a long blade.

Five of the six people who died were women. Several others, including a baby, were injured.

The New South Wales police commissioner told Australia’s ABC News that it was “obvious” Mr Cauchi focused on women.

The man killed was security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, who tried to intervene in the attack.

“The videos speak for themselves, don’t they?” commissioner Karen Webb told ABC News Breakfast.

“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that seems to be an area of interest that the offender focused on women and avoided the men.

“We don’t know what was operating in the mind of the offender and that’s why it’s important now that detectives spend so much time interviewing those who know him, were around him, close to him.

“So we can get some insight into what he might have been thinking.”

Authorities previously said the attack was most likely “related to the mental health” of Cauchi, who was shot dead by a lone police officer on Saturday.

He was already known to police but had never been arrested or charged in his home state Queensland. He had lived itinerantly for several years and was first diagnosed with a mental illness at 17, Queensland Police said.

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