Mass stabbing in Australia

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Zero convo about this? How odd.

If there were a Muslim angle a certain person would be all over the thread. But it was a white guy killing women, and then killed by one.

Actually there was a Muslim angle, just not the kind that “certain person” likes:

This is so sad. Among the dead is a young mother. Her infant was wounded.

The cop who took him down is a real hero.

A similar situation occurred in Melbourne many years ago when my ship docked in Australia. Some cook went postal at a pizza place, hacking several people with a cleaver or something.

Australia must outlaw knife ownership.

No it mustn’t, Defacto at r5. Virtually anything can be a murder weapon.

Then there’s that kind of thing that’s nothing but a murder weapon.

How many dead would there be if this was transplanted to America and Cauchi had an AR-15 instead?

By the way, Defacto, let’s hear you acknowledge that the one man who died was an immigrant and a Muslim, who died trying to prevent a white man’s violence.

A male escort as the perp, no less, and a white guy.

R8, escort? Where are the dick pics?

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch or read anything about it. Unbearably sad.

All mass killers are crazy. This one just didn’t attach his evil to a known cause.

Not surprised this p.o.s. went for a woman and baby first. Cowards always do, or for the elderly.

Glad the cop blasted his fucking head off.

He was actually stabbing everyone is sight. This is being portrayed as a crime against women by some women in AU, but the victims were both men and women. The deaths were almost all women though, perhaps because women are less able to survive this kind of attack.

The perp was evidently a diagnosed schizophrenic and was living out of his car, so I'm guessing a long history of not taking his meds. The cops haven't found any clue to a motive. He actually ate lunch at a cafe on a lower floor of the mall, and then set off on his rampage on the upper floors. (Curiously, the Port Arthur killer did the same thing.) It is obvious this guy was only targeting women. Looks like one man was killed (the security guard, who must have tried hard to stop him and who was on his first daytime shift at the centre, poor guy). One more was injured, who I guess did likewise. There is phone footage that the news has been showing of ordinary guys just turning to face him and that sends him off in another direction, so definitely women targets: whether because there was an issue or just because they were more defenceless is unknown, though he seems to have targeted stores where women were more likely to be.

The cop who shot him, Insp Amy Scott, apparently got there quite quickly from the police station just up the road, and she chased him down, directed by fleeing shoppers. (It's a very big mall, over two city blocks and multiple levels, including a cineplex.) Probably because she was a woman, he rounded on her and ran at her, allowing her to take him out at close quarters and with many witnesses there to declare it to be clear self-defence, not to mention heroics: important because there will be a mandatory inquiry into his shooting. A number of guys who were either shoppers or on their way to or from the gym in the building took very brave measures to hold him at bay before she got there, and three of them ran behind her as backup, armed with nothing more than chairs. The stores all locked down and locked customers in their storerooms, but some brave people (mostly men) stayed out in the open to tend to the many wounded even while the killer was still at large.

The person who "died later in hospital" was the mother of the stabbed 9 month old baby. Two brothers rushed to their aid almost immediately, but they said they feared greatly for the mother before the paramedics took her. The baby is post-operatively "critical but stable". Fortunately several of Sydney's best hospitals were within ten minutes' ambulance drive from the scene, including the Royal Children's.

The parents of the killer immediately contacted their local State police when they saw the footage, and today sent a message through them of support for Insp. Scott. He had no history of arrest or apprehended violence orders.

Authorities have not yet confirmed the gender of the people in hospital, R13, so you may be right, but it was notable even during yesterday evening's reports that all of the people interviewed who had given first aid had given it to women (and the baby, who happens also to be a girl).

I know damn well there'll be some Australians who will say he didn't deserve to die, and that the police could have apprehended him without resorting to taking out their guns. But good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. I'm glad tax payer dollars won't be funding the rest of his days.

Yep, eye witnesses agree he targeted women, R14.

Good for the men who tried to stop him and backed up the LEO. They are also heroes.

I initially thought that the perp was a muslim, they do this shit all over the West and in Israel. Though I had a suspicion he wasn't because nowhere in the videos and no one reported him screaming allah snackbar, as muslims always do as they butcher women, children and babies.

[quote] many witnesses there to declare it to be clear self-defence, not to mention heroics: important because there will be a mandatory inquiry into his shooting

Would shooting a lunatic in the midst of a public killing spree ever be questioned? Under US law, it would be seen as justified defense of others even if the police officer was not directly threatened herself.

[quote] It is obvious this guy was only targeting women.

Absolutely not true, he was stabbing women AND men. And it wasn’t just that men were trying to stop him.

But there was a witness saying how he walked right by a man and didn't bother stabbing him. He went for the softer easier targets less likely to fight back.

Why not build all the psychopaths a Thunderdome?

Sydney attacker Joel Cauchi was a teacher turned male escort

Fucking animal.

Hopefully Australia will do something, unlike the U.S. after these situations, to better identify and treat people with mental illness in order to prevent mass killings like this.

[quote] The Queensland police acting assistant commissioner, Roger Lowe, said Cauchi had been diagnosed with a mental illness aged 17, for which he had received treatment, but his mental health had declined “in the last number of years”.

It’s the same pattern where people know that someone is mentally ill and yet nothing is done to institutionalize them for the safety of the public.

The problem for the authorities is that he had never been arrested for anything, let alone any form of violence. He HAD been identified, at 17, so pretty well immediately, and treated in the public system for ten years or more before going under a private psychiatrist. The State can't stop a man in his 30s from deciding he didn't want to keep going, or to take his meds, when he wasn't affecting anyone else.

There are thousands of people in NSW with schizophrenia at any one time, yet the last time something like this happened in Sydney was the Lindt Cafe siege in 2014, and before that an incident in 1991. So how do you predict who might do something? Not nearly all mentally ill people who don't take their meds are a threat to the public. As late as when this guy was having lunch on the day, the waiter said he seemed a bit distracted and confused, but he didn't give anyone the creeps.

The mental health system certainly isn't great here. Lots of people DO want help from it for themselves or family members that they think might be a threat, and it doesn't have the capacity to help. So there will be an inquiry and hopefully an overhaul. But a great system still wouldn't have caught up this guy, who didn't have a history of violence and didn't want to participate in the system.

This happened this morning...

[quote] Zero convo about this?

Convo? Gross.

[quote] Hopefully Australia will do something, unlike the U.S. after these situations, to better identify and treat people with mental illness in order to prevent mass killings like this.

What should be specifically done, dear? Let’s hear it.

R30, for some mentally ill people humane asylums are good for them and good for the public.

Yeah, well, first of all you have to invent a humane asylum and staff it continuously with people none of whom are freaks and bullies. Then you have to identify the mentally ill people for whom these are good and convince them to stay there. Good luck with all of that.

He had autism. Schizophrenia and autism. You can see the autism in his father’s eyes.

Anyway, the fact that he apparently was researching how to kill people, then went to a public place, calmly had lunch and started to kill people, would indicate this was less of a delusional/voices in my head schizophrenic killing and more of an “I hate the world” autistic killing.

R32, acute psychiatric units across the country know very well who would benefit from humane asylums. Even for a state hospital placement, it can take weeks to months to get a bed. In NYS there is already criteria for state hospital placement, including three psychiatric hospitalizations within a year. Mental health providers have been dealing with a very broken system for several decades. They have a pretty good idea what is needed and what might work. What is missing is the public will to actually take care for the mentally ill.

FUCK OFF AUTISM TROLL R33

I'm absolutely not debating any of that, R34, nor that most of it also applies in Australia, but literally nobody knew the Bondi perp needed that kind of help. Possibly not even himself until the day it happened.

R2 Au contraire, if it was another Muslim from Middle east/Africa stabbing indigineous people from Austria, it wouldn't be in New York Times.

[quote] The State can't stop a man in his 30s from deciding he didn't want to keep going, or to take his meds, when he wasn't affecting anyone else.

Governments have moved away from doing the right thing and using long-term involuntary commitment for long-term mental illness, but that doesn’t mean they can’t with proper legislation. Committing people to mental health facilities is not a new concept.

You can't keep 400,000 schizophrenics in mental health facilities long-term because every 10 or 15 years ONE of them goes on some spree with a knife or gun, R38. These are the kind of stats Australia has, and this is what you're not getting. You should be able to keep people involuntarily for the medium term, till you can get them back on the straight and narrow, if they have threatened to harm themselves or someone else, but this particular guy hadn't.

R39, there’s a big difference between can’t and won’t. If a government chooses not to do it, then we see the results with the mass killings.

[quote]I know damn well there'll be some Australians who will say he didn't deserve to die, and that the police could have apprehended him without resorting to taking out their guns

Nobody has said that. It was a lone policewoman confronting him and he rushed at her with the knife up, according to the three unarmed male shoppers who ran with her to give her some backup and were standing right behind her. They said they knew for sure they'd have been next if she hadn't shot him. I haven't heard anyone, in the media or among the public, who doesn't think she was a hero.

P.S. The guy who held the attacker at bay on the escalator using a bollard for defence, and who also ran towards the killer with Insp Scott, turned out to be a French national on a visa who wants to stay in Australia. The PM announced yesterday they have fast-tracked permanent residency for him. In other good news, the stabbed baby is out of intensive care.

Yes, R40, we see a mass killing EVERY 10-15 YEARS. Are you the autism troll, that it simply cannot permeate your head that the solution you are fixated on is out of all proportion with the problem?

If your solution were government policy, apart from the astronomical waste of money, nobody would ever seek treatment for psychotic episodes lest they be locked up for years for no good reason. The only ones you'd identify would be those the police had to deal with, and once again, until the weekend that would have excluded this perp.

R42, it’s about political and spending choices. Does the government say the cost is too high to prevent people from being killed, or does it decide the lives are worth the extra cost.