Efforts are underway from Australian Police to get to the bottom of the tragedy.
New details have emerged about Sydney mall attacker Joel Cauchi’s Google search history in the lead-up to his stabbing spree that left six people dead.
Cauchi also injured 12 others at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday in Australia’s worst mass-murder event since 2018, before he was fatally shot by a police officer.
Now the 40-year-old’s Google search history has been revealed, with police telling A Current Affair crime editor Simon Bouda that he had “searched about killings”.
Cauchi, a paranoid schizophrenic, had a “fixation with killing” and a “fixation with knives”, police reportedly told Bouda.
“Initially, everyone thought this was a man suffering from schizophrenia whose mind has snapped, words in his head,” Bouda said on Monday night’s edition of his show.
“I have learned today that the investigators have been able to download data from his phone, which has indicated that he had a fixation with killings.
“He also had a fixation with knives. That tells us it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment attack. Beforehand, he was thinking about killing and that is terribly frightening.”
“Disturbing” notes and drawings belonging to the attacker have reportedly been found by authorities.
Shopper Damien Guerot used a bollard to fend off Joel Cauchi (inset) as the killer tried to climb an escalator in the Bondi mall attack.
Sydney stabber seen at other malls before attack
It has also been claimed that Cauchi was seen at two other Westfield malls around Sydney, with investigators questioning whether he had been scoping them out for a possible attack.
“I was told he was spotted at Westfield in Penrith and Parramatta, just in recent weeks,” Bouda continued.
“What was going through his mind? Was he checking out other locations that he may have decided appropriate for what he wanted to do? Was he just visiting?
“Who knows? But it was happening in very quick succession.”
More details about deadly attack
Bouda provided more information about Cauchi’s attack, saying police told him Cauchi walked up behind two victims without them knowing before stabbing them to death.
He claimed the first woman was lining up to buy a coffee when he “stabbed her in the back”. He did the same to another woman.
Five of his six victims were female, with the sixth being a male security guard.
Andrew Cauchi, father of Bondi shopping mall killer Joel Cauchi, told media: “To you, he’s a monster but, to me, he was a very sick boy.” Photo / Patrick Hamilton for Daily Mail Australia
Attacker’s parents reveal why son targeted women
Cauchi’s father said his son was a “very sick boy” and revealed that he targeted women during the attack out of frustration that he could not get a girlfriend.
“I’m loving a monster,” Andrew Cauchi told media. “To you, he’s a monster but to me, he was a very sick boy.”
The killer’s mother, Michele Cauchi, told the Mail she believed her son attacked women “because he wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills”.
His parents phoned police to offer information when they recognised him on news coverage of the attack. They were due to be formally interviewed as part of police investigations.
“I’m extremely sorry, I’m heartbroken for you,” Andrew Cauchi told news.com outside his home in Rangeville, about 130 kilometres west of Brisbane.
“This is so horrendous I can’t even explain it. I’m just devastated, I love my son.”
He said his son battled mental illness for many years.
“He let himself down, he was taken off medication because he was doing so well but then he took off to Brisbane.
