As the unspeakable horror of mass killer’s deadly rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction unfolded, two fearless Frenchmen made an instant decision: ‘Okay – let’s go catch him…’

One of the two Frenchmen caught in the midst of the Westfield Bondi Junction massacre has described how he made an instant decision to help end the carnage.

‘OK, let’s go catch him,’ was Silas Despraux’s first thought.

Mr Despreaux and his compatriot Damien Guerot have given evidence about what they encountered at the shopping centre on April 13 last year.

The construction workers had gone to Westfield about 3pm and became aware something was wrong when they saw people running down the escalators.

‘We didn’t realise what was happening,’ Mr Despreaux said on Tuesday.

But when the pair realised a crazed knifeman was on the loose and stabbing shoppers at random, they vowed to stop the horror.

Despite having no training in how to deal with such a situation, the pair each grabbed a bollard and set off in pursuit of the killer.

‘After that, I was trying to find the attacker,’ Mr Despreaux told the State Coroners Court.

The friends were on level three and Cauchi on level two when he began coming up the escalators.

‘I knew I needed to stop him even if it meant hurting him,’ Mr Despreaux said.

Mr Despreaux threw his bollard at Cauchi, hitting his leg, but he did not stop.

Mr Guerot then took Mr Despreaux’s place and threw his bollard at the killer but that didn’t halt his advance.

The two men, who had ushered others to safety, left the shopping centre and ran into NSW Police Inspector Amy Scott.

‘It’s a big situation, you have to be ready,’ Mr Guerot told Inspector Scott.

‘I started screaming to her, “You need to get in there. There’s a man with a knife stabbing people. Take your gun out”.’

Mr Despreaux and Mr Guerot followed Inspector Scott back into the shopping centre for support because there was no other police back-up on the scene yet.

They were behind Inspector Scott as Cauchi advanced on her and Mr Despreaux said, ‘Shoot him, shoot him’.

Inspector Scott fired three times at schizophrenic Cauchi, hitting him in the shoulder and chest.

‘I remember the first shot didn’t seem to do anything,’ Mr Despreaux said. ‘It was very fast. He was still going.

‘However, I saw the impact from the second shot on the attacker’s chest area.’

Cauchi then fell to the ground.

Mr Despreaux and Mr Guerot – who was dubbed ‘Bollard Man’ after the attack – were hailed as heroes at the time, but on Tuesday, they both played down their roles.

‘I just want to say sorry for the families for everyone who lost someone,’ Mr Guerot said.

Mr Despreaux: ‘Sorry for everyone who lost someone that day.’

State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan thanked the men ‘for the extraordinary courage you both showed’.

‘It was extraordinary the things that you did on that day and I hope that you are healing and I hope that this process helps your healing a little bit as well,’ she added.

Outside court, the men said Inspector Scott was the real hero of the day and neither of them had thought of getting hurt.

‘It was more Silas actually that day at the beginning,’ Mr Guerot said.

‘When we get to this situation, of course fear came a bit. It was like two choices: we escape or we go.’

Mr Despreaux: ‘We don’t know if we would react the same way again but we are not heroes.’

Earlier Inspector Scott told the inquest she believed she would not get out of the shopping centre alive.

‘I actually felt nauseous as I ran in, because in my head, I’d resigned myself to the fact I was probably going to die,’ Inspector Scott said.

Inspector Scott said she had been trained to accept there was a 60-70 per cent chance a cop would not survive such a situation, even if they were with a partner and wearing a protective vest.

‘And I was neither of those,’ she said.

She broke down as she described the bravery of her fellow officers that day – some of whom never returned to work due to the trauma of the event. 

‘I just want to acknowledge their courage and bravery,’ she told the inquest.

‘Contrary to how well people feel we are trained, we still feel fear,’ she said through tears.

She also praised shopping centre workers and patrons who rallied to guard the threatened and help the injured. 

‘That day, as tragic as it was, it gave me faith in humanity. It restored my faith in humanity and the goodness of people.’

The hero cop was giving evidence on the second day of the inquest into the deaths of five women and one man slain by Cauchi. 

Inspector Scott fired three shots at 40-year-old Cauchi just one minute and 25 seconds after she entered Westfield Bondi Junction on April 13 last year.

She was the duty officer for Eastern Suburbs area command on the day of the massacre and was on her own in a car when she heard a radio alert at 3.35pm.

‘There was what we call a double beeper,’ she said, describing a call for an urgent response.

The call continued: ‘Eastern Suburbs car in the vicinity, we’re getting multiple calls, multiple stabbings at Bondi Junction Westfield.’

‘I knew then it was very real,’ Inspector Scott said.

Those killed were shoppers Dawn Singleton, 25, Jade Young, 47, Yixuan Cheng, 27, Ashlee Good, 38, Pakria Darchia, 55 and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30. 

The inquest will examine the wounding of ten others and the death of Cauchi as well as what might be done to prevent any such future mass fatal attacks.

After hearing the radio call, Inspector Scott drove straight to the shopping centre and pulled up at the corner of Oxford and Adelaide Streets at 3.37pm. 

‘As I got out of the vehicle, there were people saying, “There’s a guy in there with a knife, he’s stabbing people, he’s killing people. Please get in there”,’ she said.

Inspector Scott recalled how she entered the maze-like complex’s level four with Mr Guerot and Mr Despreaux following her.

‘At the time I was being directed by Damien and Silas to the escalators off to the right near Zara,’ she said.

‘They said that they saw a guy with a knife go up the escalators. It was in the back of my mind that there might be more than one person.

‘I considered it to be an active armed offender. I also knew that I couldn’t wait any more for my colleagues to arrive and I just had to go in.

‘It was my intention to try to find the threat.’

As Inspector Scott proceeded up the escalators, she unclipped her holster but did not draw her Glock pistol. She was followed by Mr Guerot and Mr Despreaux who said: ‘You’re on your own – we’re following you.’

When Inspector Scott spotted Cauchi for the first time and saw him carrying a knife, she yelled at him to stop. He turned and ran.

‘Knowing the size of it and the thickness of it, I knew it could cause some serious damage,’ she said of the weapon.

‘I thought as long as I’m chasing this guy, hopefully he’s not going to do any damage.’

As Inspector Scott got closer, she saw a woman with a pram hiding behind a pot plant on the other side of Cauchi. She motioned for that woman to run.

‘At that point, I yelled out, “Mate”, to get his attention back to me,’ she said of Cauchi.

‘He was kind of rocking and he sprinted downhill at me with the knife.’

Cauchi was about 6m from Inspector Scott when she fired the first of three shots at him, 44 seconds after 3.38pm.   

Asked her thoughts at that moment, she said: ‘That he was going to kill me.’

‘It was a peculiar thing,’ Inspector Scott said. ‘It’s very fast but in my mind it was extremely slow.

‘I knew my first shot had hit him. That was because of the jolt of his body but he continued to come towards me.

‘I simultaneously was saying, “Stop, drop it “and fired two further shots because I had not been able to stop him with the first shot.’

Inspector Scott approached the grounded Cauchi and found the knife under his body. She began rendering first aid but could not save his life.

‘It felt like a year but it was maybe five minutes that I was with Joel,’ she said. 

Inspector Scott said she had been trained to deal with an active armed offender during a four-day course in 2016.

Police by then had shifted away from a policy of ‘contain and negotiate’ such an offender to one of confronting them.

‘It’s “don’t wait, go”,’ Inspector Scott said. ‘Stop the killing, stop the dying.’

Chief Inspector Christopher Whalley was the forward commander on that afternoon with 35 years of experience as police officer at the time.

But he told the inquest he was confronted with ‘something we hope we never see again’.

The duty officer at Eastern Beaches area command arrived at Westfield Bondi Junction at 3.54pm and sought out Inspector Scott who was still near Cauchi’s body.

‘I asked her if she was OK, acknowledging that there was clearly a deceased person in my view nearby,’ he said.

Chief Inspector Whalley asked ‘Is that the crook?’ and Inspector Scott said, ‘Yes’.

‘I asked her if he was dead and she said, “Yeah, I shot him”,’ Chief Inspector Whalley said.

Chief Inspector Whalley was asked at the coronial inquest into the tragedy what had been done well in response to the mass murders.

‘From my perspective, the things that went well were the commitment shown by all emergency services who were present on that day and those Westfield security guards who were helping,’ he said, choking up.

‘It was an incident I’ll not forget.’

Chief Inspector Whalley described leaving the scene about four hours after Cauchi had stabbed five women and one man to death.

‘I walked back through the centre because that was the only way I knew to get out of there,’ he said.

During that walk, Chief Inspector Whalley encountered about 25 young policemen and women from Maroubra in various parts of the complex.

He stopped next to a group of officers who were guarding a body and asked why they were standing so close.

‘Their response was, “Because I don’t want to leave them alone”,’ he said.

‘These are the things that stay with you, Your Honour,’ Chief Inspector Whalley told  Ms O’Sullivan.

The court was then adjourned for five minutes to let the witness compose himself.

Upon her return to the bench, Ms O’Sullivan said Chief Inspector Whalley, ‘I’m grateful for the break too because I found what you said very moving.’

Chief Inspector Whalley was later asked if he had wished to add anything wish might help the coroner’s investigation.

He responded by noting the frequency with which police were called to respond to incidents involving citizens with mental health problems was second only to domestic violence.

‘I think there’s an opportunity to improve outcomes for people and those outcomes might not involve police,’ Chief Inspector Whalley said.

‘That’s about all I feel I can say on it.’

The coronial inquiry began at the State Coroners Court at Lidcombe in Sydney’s west on Monday and is set to run for five weeks.

Ms O’Sullivan is presiding over the inquest into the killings, which Cauchi committed with a US Marines-style Ka-Bar utility knife he bought on February 24 last year.

The families of the deceased are all legally represented, as are bodies including shopping centre management and both NSW and Queensland police.

Dr Dwyer said on Monday evidence would be ‘clear and unanimous’ that Cauchi was ‘floridly psychotic’ on the day of the stabbings.

Cauchi’s mental health history looms large over the inquiry and there has already been evidence he eventually ‘fell through the cracks’ in his treatment. 

Dr Dwyer has stressed the purpose of the inquest is not to apportion blame for what happened but to examine what can be learned from the tragedy. 

No graphic CCTV footage of the attack would be played in court and no such vision is part of the 50-volume brief of evidence. 

Dr Dwyer said Cauchi  had first been diagnosed as schizophrenic as a teenager and he had been treated successfully for many years. 

Cauchi’s parents had been able to keep him on a treatment program until he was 36 years old, but while living homeless in Sydney he had been completely unsupervised. 

Among the issues to be canvassed will be Cauchi’s previous treatment and the circumstances of him ceasing the use of psychotropic medication in 2019.

The coroner will look at the preparedness of Westfield Bondi Junction to deal with an active armed offender and the response of security staff and emergency services.

She will also consider whether there should be restrictions on weapons such as the Ka-Bar knife Cauchi used to kill his victims.

Expert testimony will be heard comparing what happened at Westfield Bondi Junction with the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017 and the mass shootings in Christchurch in 2019.

Dr Dwyer has said there will be no direct evidence of any motive for Cauchi’s actions but he may have made some ‘rudimentary plans’ for the killings.

His internet browsing showed he was obsessed with serial killers and on the morning of rampage he had conducted searches for the Columbine High School massacre.

Cauchi grew up in Toowoomba and had a relatively normal childhood but began experiencing symptoms including hallucinations and delusions when he was 14.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia around the age of 18 and for the next 18 years generally complied with taking medication as part of a treatment plan.

Cauchi was treated within the Queensland public health system from 2001 to 2012, when he began seeing a private psychiatrist. His medication was gradually reduced and finally ceased in June 2019.

His parents Andrew and Michele were worried their son was not receiving treatment and his mother raised concerns from late 2019 he was hearing voices again.

Cauchi moved to Brisbane in early 2020 and from about that time until the Westfield Bondi Junction stabbings his schizophrenia remained completely unmanaged.

He had eight ‘interactions’ with Queensland police for public transport fare evasion, traffic stops and ‘street interceptions between August 2020 and September 2023. 

In January 2023 police attended Cauchi’s parents’ home after his father confiscated a collection of knives the troubled drifter had assembled. 

His parents told police their son was mentally unwell and needed treatment – he had been hallucinating – but no further action was taken.

At the time of the shopping centre attack, Cauchi had been living rough around Maroubra in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

On the morning of April 13, 2024 he went to a Kennards storage unit at Waterloo in the inner-city and retrieved a backpack containing the Ka-Bar knife.

For the next four hours Cauchi used public transport to move between the city and eastern suburbs before entering Westfield Bondi Junction shortly after 3pm.

In less than three minutes he stabbed 16 people, killing six and injuring 10 others, before he was shot dead by Inspector Scott. 

Of Inspector Scott’s response that day, Dr Dwyer said: ‘There is no question as to the propriety of her actions.’

Dr Dwyer praised Inspector Scott’s ‘professionalism and courage’ and said she had clearly saved lives.

She also noted the ‘hope, courage and selflessness’ of civilians who witnessed the slaughter and moved quickly to help others.

‘There were so many people who were called on to do something exceptional that day who rose to the task,’ she said.

The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Marks, said on Monday he was ‘in awe’ of how Inspector Scott handled the circumstances.