The man who stabbed six people in a busy shopping mall was previously accused of attacking his father for removing his collection of knives from the family home.
Joel Cauchi was known to Queensland police for suspected mental health concerns more than a year before he armed himself with a 30-centimetre long knife and launched his unprovoked and deadly attack.
Experiencing psychotic symptoms, the 40-year-old killed six people and injured 10 others in Sydney’s Bondi Junction Westfield on April 13, 2024 before being shot dead by police inspector Amy Scott.
One evening in January 2023, Cauchi called Queensland police to his family home in Toowoomba, near Brisbane, after his father Andrew took his collection of knives.
This collection included a knife that was the exact type used in the mall attack.
At an inquest into the tragedy, body-worn video from a Queensland senior constable called to the Toowoomba house was played in the NSW Coroners Court.
“My dad has taken some of my property. It’s pretty expensive and he won’t give it back,” Cauchi says on the roadside outside the home as the officer approaches.
He is seen persistently urging the officer, who cannot be legally named, to go talk to his parents and get the knives back.
“It’s going to cost me heaps of money,” he said.
“I just need to get them back right away.”
Diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teen, Cauchi had been successfully treated through anti-psychotic medication and psychiatric visits.
But by March 2020 he had been completely detached from the mental health system, the court was told earlier.
When asked by Queensland police about his mental health in January 2023, Cauchi says he felt “really good” and “terrific”.
He also says he felt much better since ceasing his medication which caused numerous side-effects.
His parents told police attending their home that they held concerns for their son’s mental health, including that he had been up at 3am that day pacing around and being disruptive.
Andrew Cauchi took the knives out of concern, Cauchi’s mum Michele told the officer’s partner.
Cauchi had “laid hands” on his father and sworn at his mother during the incident, police were told.
State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan is overseeing the hearings, with the aim of giving the victims’ families a better understanding of what happened that April Saturday.
Dawn Singleton, 25, Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Pikria Darchia, 55, Yixuan Cheng, 27 and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, were killed by Cauchi.
Readers seeking support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyond blue on 1300 22 4636.
