Bondi Junction stabbings: lack of mental health care a problem that is fixable', inquest told

"Significant reform of the mental health sector is needed to keep people safe, the coronial inquest into the Bondi Junction mass stabbing has been told as it draws to a close. Joel Cauchi, 40, killed Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Yixuan Cheng, 27, Pikria Darchia, 55, Dawn Singleton, 25, and Faraz Tahir, 30, and injured 10 others at Westfield Bondi Junction on 13 April 2024 before he was shot and killed by police inspector Amy Scott."

"In May, a five-week coronial inquest into the seven deaths heard how the extremely unwell man from Queensland slipped through the healthcare net and stopped taking medication for his schizophrenia five years earlier. Cauchi, who was homeless at the time of the attack, developed a fixation on violence, knives and serial killers, and with some rudimentary planning, inflicted a mass stabbing similar to those he had searched for online."

"Dwyer said that in both Queensland and NSW there was a serious lack of adequate community-based treatments and housing for people who were seriously mentally ill. It's not a political statement to say that we need significant investment in those areas to keep people safe, she told the court. As a stark example of the inadequacy of the current services, she said in 1991, there were about 1,150 short-stay beds in four main inner-city hostels in Sydney."

A man with schizophrenia stopped medication five years earlier, became homeless, developed fixations on violence and knives, and carried out a mass stabbing at Westfield Bondi Junction that killed seven and injured ten. The attacker was shot and killed by a police inspector. The coronial inquest examined why he became so unwell and whether opportunities existed to prevent his decline into psychosis. Community-based treatments and housing in Queensland and NSW are described as seriously inadequate, with historical short-stay hostel capacity reduced from about 1,150 beds in 1991 to fewer than 300 temporary beds today. The shortfall in services is presented as a finite, fixable problem with roots reaching back to the 1960s.

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