Chilling CCTV of the moment staff and shoppers filed into a back room as the Bondi Junction stabbing massacre unfolded has emerged.
Five women and one man were murdered in the stabbing on Saturday at Westfield Bondi Junction. Eight victims remain in hospital, including an infant girl in intensive care.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: 7NEWS explains stages of Bondi Junction attack.
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The killer, 40-year-old Queensland man Joel Cauchi, was shot dead by police at the scene, seemingly singling out women in the country’s worst massacre in recent years.
Bill from Hair Royale corralled staff and customers into the salon’s back room after hearing gunshots, now known to be from inspector Amy Scott’s police-issued Glock.
“I heard the gunshots and I’m like, ‘Oh my god, they’re shooting, they’ve got guns. Go! Go!’,” he told 7NEWS.
“The girls in the back, they’re like, ‘They’re going to shoot us from the front, they’re going to shoot us through the door, we’re dead.’
“I’m like, ‘Just relax, relax. It’s OK, it’s going to be OK’ and the mum was like, ‘Tell (my son) it’s not real, tell him it’s not real.’ The son is screaming and I’m like, ‘It’s not real, relax, just hide, it’s going to be OK’.”
Hundreds of people fled the eastern Sydney shopping centre during the attack that claimed the life of osteopath Ashlee Good, 38; Dawn Singleton, 25, the daughter of high-profile businessman John Singleton; architect Jade Young, 47; artist and designer Pikria Darchia, 55; Chinese student Yixuan Cheng, 27; and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, a Pakistani refugee who was the only man killed.
As a floral tribute to the victims grew at Bondi Junction, Premier Chris Minns said a special coronial inquiry would examine the circumstances of Cauchi’s “horrifying, vile act”.
The inquiry, bolstered by up to $18 million in extra funding, would look at the police response, as well as the killer’s interactions with NSW and Queensland agencies.
Minns said the killer’s motive might never be known, but that it was “the truth of the matter” that many women were targeted in the attack, which could pave the way for security guards in shopping centres to be armed.
– With AAP