A high-ranking paramedic has admitted mistakes were made in blocking medical assistance from entering a shopping centre after a stabbing rampage.
Brett Armitage took control of paramedics in the aftermath of the April 2024 attack in which Joel Cauchi stabbed 16 people inside the Bondi Junction shopping centre, killing six.
Suspicions that there was a second assailant led to Armitage, a NSW Ambulance assistant commissioner, declaring the scene as a “hot zone”.
The declaration, 52 minutes after Cauchi was shot dead, required paramedics inside to withdraw from the centre and barred other crews from entering.
At that time, police knew they were dealing with a single assailant but had not informed NSW Ambulance, an inquest into the attack has been told.
Armitage was quizzed today on a statement from a senior police officer at the scene who said he had been asked by a “senior commission paramedic” if the scene was still a “hot zone”.
The police officer responded it was “still an active crime scene” and was asked to explain why paramedics were still inside.
“If any of my paramedics get hurt or stabbed, it’s on your head,” the senior paramedic allegedly said.
Armitage “categorically” denied making the comment but stood by his decision to withdraw the paramedics from the centre.
The scene was never downgraded from a “hot zone”, which Armitage admitted should have occurred at 5pm when he knew there was not a second attacker.
Critical care paramedic Christopher Wilkinson said “confusion” on the ground meant paramedics were prevented from entering the shopping centre before the “hot zone” declaration.
“I stood there with my boots on the ground quite frustrated that people may well be dying upstairs and no one is doing anything medically for them,” the four-decade veteran paramedic said.
All injured people had been treated and removed from the building by 4.30pm and the declaration had no impact on the clinical outcomes of victims, the inquest was told.
The first of Cauchi’s victims, Dawn Singleton, asked bystanders to call an ambulance after she was stabbed.
Police arrived within six minutes and commenced CPR, with paramedics arriving another 12 minutes later noting she had died.
“There is an expectation that if you ring an ambulance, it will come,” Wilkinson said.
The effectiveness of inter-agency communication during mass casualty events is one of the key topics being canvassed at the inquest.
Wilkinson said he was proud to be a paramedic at Bondi.
Wilkinson, who has been trained in dealing with mass-casualty events, said lives were lost when emergency services did not communicate effectively.
He emphasised the “need to change the way we do things” but commended paramedics who responded to the tragedy.
“At Bondi, it made me very proud to be a paramedic,” Wilkinson said.
Singleton, 25, Faraz Tahir, 30, Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Pikria Darchia, 55, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, were killed in the April 13, 2024, attack.
Cauchi, who stabbed his first seven victims within 30 seconds, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teen and had been successfully treated until 2019 when he stopped his medication, the coroner previously heard.
He lived a largely transient life away from the support of his parents in Toowoomba, near Brisbane and had been homeless when he set foot into the shopping centre for the last time.
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