Bondi stabbing: Witness reveals chilling details

Yohan Phillip was working at a luggage store at Bondi Junction when the terrifying attack unfolded, and he spoke to The Project on Sunday night about the moment when he noticed something horrible was taking place.

Mr Phillip revealed details about how he could see a male security guard who was injured, and how a woman in the store with him desperately wanted to help.

At the time, the doors were closed for safety, and he had to decide whether he should let the woman out.

“We saw the security guard who had been cut open and was bleeding out in front of us in front of the cafe and this lady, I still don’t know her name, I know she was wearing a pink top,” Mr Phillip said,

“She said ‘I’m a nurse, I can go and help.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to open this door, if I open this door I don’t know if I can let you back in. And I don’t know if he’s going to come in, I don’t know if he’s going to come after you.’

“‘Just stay here and wait, let’s just wait.’ And she was pretty frantic, and of course she again, I don’t know how straight she was thinking, she said, ‘I’ve got to go, I can help.’ I said, ‘All right, if I open this door I don’t know if I can let you back in, I just don’t know what’s going to happen.’

“So I opened the door and let her out, she ran up to the guy. At that point a police officer also had run past and two members of the public also assisting … and I think she’s fine, she made it out alive.”

He said the whole experience was “odd”.

“Yeah it was odd, too many moral dilemmas for one day.”

Mr Phillip said also encountered the heroes who helped stabbed baby Harriet, saying they talked while waiting to give a statement after the attack.

“After the baby had been stabbed through the pram she (mother Ashlee Good) had run over to give the baby to these gents while she was taking damage from the attacker and my understanding is that he held the baby’s side as it was bleeding,” he said.

“The back of my store, we can look out into the street, and we saw the baby getting rolled out and everybody was just at that point, we were like this is something else.

“I have footage of that and it’s so insane to watch a little kid, a nine-month-old, go through that but these guys, three grown men were all besides themselves. There’s no real way to explain how that is, it’s very very odd.”

He said he won’t be going back to work anytime soon.

“I’m not going in there for a while, there’s too much in my mind, the blood on the floor, the security guard gets me it’s a lot for me because I saw him walking past I kind of relate to his story. I’m a migrant myself and he’s probably a migrant worker who was just doing his job … unarmed, and just sliced open like that, it’s pretty odd.

“I don’t think I’ll be too comfortable going back to Bondi Junction for a while.”

The only male victim to be killed in the horrific stabbing attack at Westfield Bondi Junction was identified as Faraz Tahir.

Mr Tahir, a 30-year-old security guard at the busy shopping centre, moved to Australia last year through a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees program, fleeing persecution in his home country of Pakistan.

His friend and fellow member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Shajar Ahmad, told The Sydney Morning Herald he “had so many hopes and dreams for his future”.

He had worked just four or five shifts at Westfield, Mr Ahmad said. On Saturday afternoon – his first daytime shift at the centre – his new life here was cut tragically short.

Mr Tahir was one of six people murdered by Queensland man Joel Cauchi during his violent rampage. Bellevue Hill architect and mother-of-two Jade Young, 47; Dawn Singleton, the 25-year-old daughter of millionaire businessman John Singleton; and new mum Ashlee Good, 38, are the other victims who have been named so far.

‘A great shock’

It comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke to 60 Minutes on Sunday night to express his condolences to those who have lost loved ones, been injured or otherwise impacted by the stabbing.

“People have lost their lives and many others injured, and of course thousands traumatised by the events of yesterday directly,” Mr Albanese said.

“It comes as a great shock in peace-loving nations like Australia.”

When asked if Australians may have lost a sense of safety following the horrific events, he turned his attention to the acts of courage.

“I believe that tragically amid the carnage and atrocity that was yesterday we do have as well to give thanks to some of the best of our Australian character that was shown, the inspector Amy Scott who ran towards danger, who risked her own life to end the carnage and to take this perpetrator out.

“The other Australians including the footage that people have seen of the man with the bollard standing, he could have very easily retreated, so it is a difficult time, a tough time. You can’t gild the lily about this and Australians are grieving, my heart goes out to the families and loved ones of those who have lost lives.

“I’ve spoken to a couple of people who are in that situation to personally express my condolences on behalf of the nation. But it will be a difficult time and it’s important in coming days that people be allowed to express their grief, one of the messages we need to send out is that if people need support they reach out.

“It’s not a sign of weakness it’s a necessary part of health care and for people who were there in that centre, their lives will have changed forever as well and there were thousands of them at that time which was really peak hour at that time.”

Mr Albanese also expressed his gratitude towards those who protect all Australians.

“The men and women who wear our uniform every day, whether they be members of the Australian Defence Force, or our police and emergency service, they deserve our thanks each and every day because they put the lives of their fellow Australians before themselves, they put the safety of their fellow Australians before their own safety, and we witnessed that yesterday.”