Sydney stabbing Bondi news live: 7 dead in West Junction shopping centre attack as first pictures of Ash Good revealed

Footage shows terrified shop workers locking doors and telling customers to “get all the way back” as a knifeman stabbed shoppers at a Sydney shopping centre.

Footage taken from inside the Westfield Bondi Junction shows terrified shop workers trying to shield shoppers from the attacker on Saturday.

A first-time mother was among those killed in a shock stabbing spree at a Sydney shopping mall, with her nine-month-old baby undergoing surgery after suffering knife wounds.

Six people were murdered at the Westfield Bondi Junction centre on Saturday afternoon, with the attacker shot dead by a “heroic” off-duty female police officer who had responded to the scene.

Ash Good, 38, is the first victim to be identified, with witnesses reporting that she handed over her small child to other terrified shoppers for them to carry out make-shift medical aid.

Holly Evans has more in this report:

Workers at a hair salon near the shopping centre ushered in “traumatised” older women.

A woman who works at the salon told ABC News: “We’ve had the older women coming into the salon who were in Westfield, traumatised, we had to sit them down because they were running and they weren’t fit enough to run.”

One woman said she saw two dead bodies before she hid in the Lululemon sportswear shop.

She told ABC News: “At the counter while I was as paying I heard this screaming of kids, women and men outside the shop – as soon as I turned my face to look I saw a guy who was wearing this green outfit, jersey materials, with shorts and a t-shirt with a very massive knife on hand.

“Then I saw a dead body right in front. There was massive [amounts of] blood around that body, a few metres after there was another dead body as well on the floor which was pretty scary.

“He had already stabbed two and they were on the floor and he was trying to turn back, like a U-turn, back to Lululemon shop, then I just screamed ‘where is the safest changing room in which I can go and lock myself’.

“I was really in fear, I was thinking if they couldn’t shut Lululemon door then I would maybe get stabbed – we locked down inside Lululemon for 45 [minutes] to one hour as the police came.”

Local politician Kellie Sloane said Saturday’s attack was “something we could never imagine here” in Sydney.

“It’s been an incredibly distressing day for so many people in our community, people who went to the shops today, a packed shopping centre, and then got caught up in something we could never imagine here, something so disturbing and terrifying for many,” said Ms Sloane.

A nine-month-old infant who was attacked during the stabbing spree remains “in a serious but stable condition in hospital”, Assistant Commissioner Cooke said.

He added: “We have a number of people remaining in hospital being treated for their injuries.

“We know many are in a serious but stable condition.

“In particular, a young child remains in a serious but stable condition in hospital.”

The knife attacker who killed six people in a stabbing spree at a Sydney shopping centre before being shot dead was a 40-year-old man with mental health issues, police have said.

New South Wales Police said they had identified the attacker as Joel Cauchi, of Queensland, and do not think he was motivated by terrorism.

The lone knifeman attacked shoppers on Saturday afternoon at the Westfield shopping centre in the suburb of Bondi Junction in eastern Sydney.

Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said Cauchi is believed to have come to New South Wales last month and that police have spoken to his family, who are co-operating with the investigation.

He told a press conference: “As I had said last night, there is still to this point nothing that we have, no information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation, ideology or otherwise.

“We know that the offender in the matter suffers from mental health.

“We are continuing to work through the profiling of the offender but very clearly to us at this stage it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved.”

Roi Huberman, a sound engineer at ABC TV in Australia, told the network that he sheltered in a shop in the Bondi mall during the attack.

“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.”