What the Bondi Junction killer said to a victim when he stabbed her
By Julie Power
For the first time, a survivor of the Bondi Junction stabbing attack that left six people dead and many injured has revealed what the killer said after he plunged the knife into her stomach.
“Catch you.” That’s what the assailant Joel Cauchi, 40, said to Liya Barko, 35, after he knifed her.
Liya Barko says she would like to see one of the men who helped her so that she could “give him a hug.”Credit: Nine
Cauchi left Barko bleeding on the ground of Westfield Bondi Junction during the attack on Saturday, April 13. More than a dozen others were severely injured by Cauchi in the bloody rampage through the busy shopping centre.
Barko told Nine, the owner of this masthead, that she saw Cauchi looking at her after he had stabbed her.
Asked by 9News reporter Damian Ryan if Cauchi said anything to her, Barko replied, “Catch you.”
She recalled the fear of other shoppers who witnessed the attack. “On the floor bleeding, you can see everyone. Some were crying, they were scared for their lives, too.”
A man wearing a green T-shirt came to Barko’s aid, helping to staunch the bleeding. “I would like to see him again and give him a hug,” she said.
Barko was released from hospital a week ago after being hospitalised in a critical condition. She recalled the smiling face of a doctor who was ecstatic to see her alive.
Barko kept thinking of his smiling face: “If I die now, I will destroy his shift.”
Born in Ukraine, Barko moved to Australia five years ago to study. She went to Bondi Junction Westfield that day because she needed volleyball equipment.
Cauchi had a long history of mental illness, and was believed to have had schizophrenia.
Barko said she was now wondering how a man with a history of mental illness turned “a normal Saturday into hell.”
The stabbing rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction took the lives of five women and a man: new mother and osteopath Ashlee Good, 38; bride-to-be Dawn Singleton, 25; artist Pikria Darchia, 55; architect Jade Young, 47; Chinese economics student Yixuan Cheng, 27; and Westfield security guard Faraz Tahir, 30.
Cauchi, a Queensland man, was shot and killed by NSW Police Inspector Amy Scott.
Since the attack, Jade Young’s mother Elizabeth and friends of Pikria Darchia, have called for more help and support for people suffering from mental health problems.
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