Westfield Bondi Junction stabbing : It took seven minutes for Westfield’s emergency response leader to arrive at the control center after the first radio call for help during the deadly stabbing spree.
On the afternoon of April 13, 2024, Scentre Group retail manager Joseph Gaerlan, the chief warden of Westfield Bondi Junction, was in charge when Joel Cauchi launched a brutal attack with a pigging knife.
In just over three minutes, Cauchi killed six people and injured 10 others, including a nine-month-old baby.
Gaerlan told the inquest into the tragedy that the first radio call from a panicked security guard came through at 3:33 p.m.
Code black, code black, alpha, there’s lots of blood, you need to hurry,” he recalled her saying.
In the days following the attack, he reported hearing that there had been “a man with a knife” and a “possible fatality” during the call.
Westfield Bondi Junction Stabbing: Timeline, Response, and Tragic Outcomes
However, after reviewing the CCTV footage, Gaerlan revised his statement, telling the inquest that hearing those specific terms would have triggered a “very different response,” as they would have indicated an active armed offender situation.
The retail manager explained that when he wrote his initial statement, he was “highly emotional and highly stressed” and hadn’t yet had time to fully process the tragic events.
The initial call created confusion, and Gaerlan was on his way to confirm what was happening when he received the first clear radio confirmation that an active armed offender was involved.
He also noted that the radio traffic was congested with a “constant stream of messages,” making communication difficult during the attack. Despite this, he chose not to instruct everyone to switch to a dedicated emergency radio channel.
Chief Warden’s Delayed Arrival, Communication Gaps, and the Aftermath of the Mass Casualty Attack
After confirming the attack, Gaerlan radioed the control center to contact police, make an announcement over the public address system, and display an emergency warning on the digital screens.
The inquest heard that announcements weren’t broadcast throughout the center until 3:52 p.m. — 14 minutes after NSW Police Inspector Amy Scott shot and killed Cauchi.
Gaerlan said he was “immensely frustrated” by the lack of clear information during the incident and only confirmed that there was a single offender who had been shot after reviewing the CCTV footage.
He assumed that this information had been relayed to the police but did not instruct the control room operator to do so.
Despite having received training for active armed offender situations just 11 days prior to the attack, Gaerlan admitted he had never faced anything like a mass casualty event before.
I was terrified,” Gaerlan admitted.
I was doing the best I could with the information I was receiving from various sources at the time.
The inquest, which is evaluating the security response to the mass casualty event, was also told that the alarms activated after Cauchi was shot were inaccurate.
Instead of advising customers to escape and hide due to the presence of an armed offender, the alerts incorrectly instructed them to evacuate.
Security guards who confronted Cauchi during his unprovoked attack have been praised for their bravery, including 30-year-old Faraz Tahir, who was fatally stabbed.
Other victims of the tragedy included Dawn Singleton, 25; Ashlee Good, 38; Jade Young, 47; Pikria Darchia, 55; and Yixuan Cheng, 27.
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