Autumn in Sydney is the best time of year, so it’s no surprise that Ashlee Good was having an idyllic Saturday.
Walking in the sunshine with her daughter Harriet in her arms, she realized that she was wearing the exact same outfit she had worn nine months earlier, when she was still very pregnant. She took a photo and posted it to Instagram along with the photo she had taken last July, shortly before going into labor. “9 months in vs. 9 months out,” she captioned the happy snaps.
And then, because it really was a wonderful day, with the waves hitting the Bondi beach road and the smell of roast sausages wafting from the children’s soccer fields and the clarity of the light that makes all of us who live Here I think he is the best. In the best place in the world, Ashlee also uploaded a cute video of adorable Harriet sitting in her car seat nibbling on a piece of bread. While the sun’s rays danced on the girl’s face, the song My Girl by The Temptations played in the background.
In the years to come, those images—proud moments captured by a loving mother—will mean more than Ashlee ever imagined. Just hours later, mother and daughter were stabbed in the horrific attack at the Westfield shopping center in Sydney’s Bondi Junction. With blood pouring from her wounds, the stricken mother’s last act was to reach into her pram to pick up Harriet, who had been stabbed in the stomach, and throw her into the arms of two men. In shock, and with her life declining, the only thing that mattered to the 38-year-old osteopath was that her beloved only child was safe.
Ashlee Good, the 38-year-old woman who died while trying to protect her daughter Harriet
As baby Harriet fights for her life after surgery, with her father, Dan Flanagan, at her bedside, what’s chilling about the stabbing attack that killed six people and left several others in critical condition is that it happened in the manner more common and easier to identify. settings.
We all buy. We send our teenagers to work on Saturdays at Sephora or McDonald’s or to make tea at the hair salons in these huge shopping malls. We give our young people their first experience of independence by letting them roam with their friends.
Or, as I did that same afternoon at another Westfield, as the stabbing frenzy raged across the harbor, we split up and agreed to meet half an hour later. “I love the color of your nails,” I told my daughter as she left her getting a manicure while she returned a t-shirt to TK Maxx. It is inconceivable that in the simplest, most prosaic moment, she could have said goodbye to him forever.
The stories that come out of Saturday are difficult to process because it is a tragedy that could have happened to any of us. The dead were not in a war zone. They weren’t in an American school where random murders are the sad consequence of weak gun laws. They weren’t in a skyscraper or a concert where cowardly killers know they can cause the most damage. Rather, they took place in a shopping center amidst scenes so ordinary that they could take place anywhere in the world. A father takes his children to buy gifts for his mother’s birthday. A mother sending her 11-year-old son back to Woolworths to buy a supermarket item she had forgotten. Teenagers celebrate the first day of the fall school holidays by trying out Selena Gomez’s new blush range.
And then, in that tranquility, in that normality, comes a fight, a sideways movement that does not match the rhythms and routines of shopping. Some see a man with a knife. They start running. Others freeze. A shopper will later say that she felt a sharp pain in her back. Only later will she find out that she came from a knife. And then there is the panic. Is there an attacker? What if there are more? What if there is a bomb? Just six years ago this city suffered the horrific siege at the Lindt cafe where an Islamic State-inspired gunman, believed to be carrying a bomb, held 18 hostages trapped for 17 hours. Two lost their lives.
Police are continuing to investigate the scene of the mass stabbing in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, which left six dead and several others in a critical condition.
On Saturday, most ran to the stores, where staff rushed to slide the aluminum roll-up doors to keep those inside safe. Some hid in bathrooms or stairs. And because there are multiple levels to this iconic Westfield, some grabbed their phones to record the pandemonium unfolding on the floor below. It’s those videos, of the knife man attacking shoppers and being confronted on an escalator by a hero with a bollard, that make us understand the danger like never before. Social media receives a lot of criticism, but it also tells the story, in real time, of the world we find ourselves in.
He also conveyed to us the amazing bravery shown by a senior policewoman. Inspector Amy Scott was working alone that afternoon when she heard reports of a man with a knife. Footage of her shows her running through the mall, followed by a passerby who had grabbed a chair as a potential weapon. When she walked up behind the attacker, later identified as Joel Cauchi, 40, she yelled at him to put down the knife. She did not do it. Then she shot him in the chest.
Westfield Bondi Junction covers 1,412,860 square feet. It has 331 stores distributed over seven floors. There are gyms and cinemas and 3,304 parking spaces below. It’s a town within a town, offering Chanel to the rich and sushi bars to surfers who arrive barefoot from the iconic beach just over a mile away. My oldest daughter lives in the area and was shopping there the day before. Her friends were at the center on Saturday. They heard the shot and hid in a store.
Dawn Singleton was two years ahead of my daughter at the same high school. She is the daughter of one of Australia’s best-known businessmen, John Singleton. On Saturday, Dawn, 25, went shopping at Westfield to get her makeup done for her upcoming wedding to her childhood sweetheart Ashley Wildey. Ashley is a New South Wales police officer and had finished her shift before the attack, but was called back to work as police scrambled to deal with the unfolding crisis.
She arrived at Westfield Bondi Junction unaware that Dawn, who had bought her wedding dress last week, was inside. As a source told the Daily Telegraph: “He had arrived at Westfield when officers realized that her fiancée was one of the victims.” He was taken from the scene to be comforted by family and friends. Because the mall was still a crime scene 24 hours later, neither he nor Dawn’s parents had been able to formally identify the body by Sunday afternoon.
Among the other victims was architect and mother of two, Jade Young, who was remembered yesterday at the Brontë Surf Club, where she was a much-loved member. Also killed were security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, a Pakistani refugee who arrived in Australia a year ago, and local Pikria Darchia, 55.
With 3,000 cars still parked under the mall on Sunday morning, the pressing question was why? Initial fears that the attacker was Jewish or Muslim were quickly dispelled. Joel Cauchi was a man with a mental illness. He had never been arrested or charged with any criminal offence, but was “street checked” by police officers on the Gold Coast in December. Police believe he was living with schizophrenia and using drugs, including methamphetamine and psychedelics.
People, including emergency workers, have left flowers in front of the crime scene in memory of those who lost their lives.
Somehow, combined with the environment, it makes the attack even more absurd. How to protect yourself when tragedy can occur anywhere and at any time? Is it safe to buy winter socks? A new television? Diapers for your baby? And what do you do if something happens? Today I spoke with my daughters about where it is best to hide, whether to run, whether to help and what trauma they can experience seeing events like those that occurred on Saturday.
But along with this horrible barbarism came the best of humanity. Much praise has gone to the ‘Bollard Man’, the Ukrainian Silas Despreaux, who repelled the attacker with a bollard, preventing him from accessing a playground where dozens of small children were playing. Silas, who moved to Sydney from Ukraine three years ago, works as a trader. “He’s fine, just shocked,” a friend said. “He says that he’s not a hero, that he’s just a normal guy.”
And then there’s the father who appeared to have grabbed eye masks from a store so he could place them over his young children’s eyes to protect them from the carnage as they left the mall. If horror comes in the most unlikely place, so does common sense. The psychological scars can be deep.
We appreciate the messages from the King, Queen and Prince and Princess of Wales. Camaraderie, community, Commonwealth: they matter, as Ashlee Good’s family so eloquently expressed in the hours after her death. Little Harriet, with her strawberry blonde hair and big eyes, was doing well after a long surgery, they said. And as they reeled from the terrible loss of “a beautiful mother, daughter, partner, friend and an exceptional human being,” they also wanted to thank the two men who held and cared for Harriet when Ashlee couldn’t. The little girl will grow up without her mother, but as Ashlee’s adorable photos attest, she was deeply loved.