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5 dead, suspect killed after stabbing attack at shopping center in Sydney, Australia; multiple people injured
SYDNEY (AP) — A man stabbed five people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center Saturday before he was fatally shot, police said. Multiple people, including a small child, were also injured in the attack.
The suspect stabbed 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, New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters. Five of the victims and the suspect died, he said. He had no specific details on the condition of the injured.
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.”
Rick Rycroft / AP
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.”
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A teacher and student killed in a shooting earlier this week at a school in Madison, Wisconsin, were identified Wednesday by authorities.
The Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office said in a news release provided to CBS News that 42-year-old Erin West and 14-year-old Rubi Vergara were fatally shot Monday morning at Abundant Life Christian School.
Preliminary examinations determined the two died of “homicidal firearm related trauma.” Both were pronounced dead at the scene, the medical examiner said.
An online obituary on a local funeral site stated Vergara was a freshman who leaves behind her parents, one brother, and a large extended family. It described her as “an avid reader” who “loved art, singing and playing keyboard in the family worship band.”
West’s exact position with the school was unclear.
The medical examiner also confirmed that a preliminary autopsy found that the suspected shooter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow — a student at the same school — was pronounced dead at a local hospital Monday of “firearm related trauma.” Madison Chief of Police Shon F. Barnes had previously told reporters that Rupnow was pronounced dead while being transported to a hospital.
Police had also previously stated that she was believed to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The shooting at the private Christian K-12 school was reported just before 11 a.m. Monday. In addition to the two people killed and the shooter, six others were wounded.
Police said the shooting occurred in a classroom where a study hall was taking place involving students from several grades.
A handgun was recovered after the shooting, Barnes said, but it was unclear where the gun came from or how many shots were fired. A law enforcement source said the weapon used in the shooting appears to have been a 9 mm pistol.
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