‘It was carnage’: Eyewitness tells of Australia stabbing spree

SYDNEY (AP) — A man began stabbing people at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, leaving five people dead and a small child injured, police said.

The suspect attacked nine people at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, which is in the city’s eastern suburbs, before a police inspector shot him after he turned and raised a knife, Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters.

“It was carnage,” one eyewitness told the BBC.

Cooke said he believed that the suspect acted alone, and he was “content that there is no continuing threat.” He said officials didn’t know who the offender was. “This is quite raw,” he said, and a ”lengthy and precise” investigation was just beginning.

He said there was “nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or any ideology.” When asked whether officials were ruling out terrorism, he said: “We’re not ruling anything out.”

Cooke said the police inspector, a senior officer, was alone when she confronted the suspect and engaged him soon after her arrival on the scene, “saving a range of people’s lives.”

Video showed many ambulances and police cars around the shopping center, and people streaming out.

Paramedics were treating patients at the scene.

Witness Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a store during the incident.

“And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Then the very capable person in the store took us to the back where it can be locked. She then locked the store and then she then let us through the back and now we are out.”