Brave cop's ‘impressive' act in Bondi massacre
When Amy Scott came face to face with knife-wielding Joel Cauchi, it was the first time she'd ever had to pull the trigger on a 'live threat' let alone a mass murderer.
Like all general duties officers, the inspector had completed her annual day-long firearm training at shooting ranges every 12 months and in her 19 years in the force has faced her share of violent, tense, situations.
But nothing compared to the stand-off with a man she knew had already killed innocent civilians. And she had every reason to believe he would strike again.
'What she did was pretty impressive,' said a special operations officer superiorly trained and ever ready for such a mass emergency with a 'live threat' and mass casualties.
'We train for this kind of thing every shift, but general duty cops don't,' said the officer whose name can't be revealed.
'They have their yearly training and a one-off four-day course but I think it's pretty safe to say we were lucky that day that it was her.
'She's someone who clearly had the nous, the calm under pressure, the control and the guts to tackle him head-on and make sure civilians were out of harm's way. Other general duties officers might wait for back-up or fight feelings of wanting to run the other way.
'We can do the training, but you never know how you are going to react until you are put in that situation. Yep she did good.'
Another special ops officer said Inspector Scott's ability to 'hit the target's centre of body mass' was proof of her proficiency and character under the most immense pressure.
'She shot three times and hit him twice, right where he needed to be shot. It's pretty impressive.'
Inspector Scott insists she's no more of a hero than any of the other officers, paramedics, security staff, hospital emergency crews and regular shoppers faced with such unimaginable terror in Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday April 13, 2024.
She says any of the police officers would have, and did, rush into the building just like she had - she just got there first.
'I actually felt nauseous as I ran in because in my head, I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die,' Inspector Scott told the inquest into the massacre.
'So when you do your active armed offender training, originally they would talk about your percentages and chance of survival, and you're looking at a 60 to 70 per cent chance of non-survival, and that's if you're partnered up and vested up, and I was neither of those.'
Inspector Scott was referring to the training introduced in the wake of the Lindt siege on December 14, 2014, when gunman Man Haron Monis held 18 people hostage until police stormed the building 17 hours later.
Ironically Inspector Scott was one of the dozens of first responders who rushed to Martin Place all those years ago when the emergency call came across the police radio.
A coroner ruled it was a 'terrorist incident' for which Monis was solely responsible but found authorities had made major errors, including by delaying entry, during which time a hostage was killed.
In response the new police training focused on ending 'active shooter' situations more quickly, in a divergence from their policies around other hostage scenarios.
Inspector Scott told the Bondi Junction inquest she completed the four-day intensive course in 2016.
'It was very intense. It was over a four day period. I remember it was out at Castle Hill, and the big change and shift in that it was a set of circumstances around shifting away from that contain, negotiate,' she said.
'So, the rapidity of what an offender might be doing … if they're actively using a weapon of some form to take lives quickly, contain, negotiate, the traditional method is not suitable in responding to that.
'It was about training us on methods to use in that active armed offender situation and how to respond. It's, 'Don't wait. Go. Stop the killing. Stop the dying'.'
Those words, 'Don't wait, stop the dying' were ringing in the ears of Inspector Scott - a former Cessnock High school captain, soccer lover turned no-nonsense cop with a wife and two children waiting for her at home - as she stood in front of her own 'live treat' that day.
He was a man who had already stabbed and killed six people and injured a further 12, including a nine-month-old girl.
'It might seem like an obvious question, but what was going through your mind when you fired the first shot?' Counsel assisting the coroner Peggy Dwyer SC asked Inspector Scott at the inquest.
'That he was going to kill me,' she said matter-of-factly.
'After you fired the first shot, are you conscious of what happened next?' she was asked.
'It's a peculiar thing. It's very fast, but in my mind it was extremely slow. I knew my first shot had hit him, but - that was because of the jolt of his body, but he continued to come towards me.
'And I also simultaneously was saying, 'Stop, drop it', and fired two further shots because I had not been able to stop the threat with the first one.
'He just turned and started running at me … I know that one hit him, because it sort of made his chest - it sort of slowed him a bit, but I continued to back up because he was advancing really quickly.
'I shot two more times because I didn't stop him straight away and I was trying to stop him, and then he fell to the ground. I actually fell to the ground as well, because I was trying to back up so quickly.
'He actually fell at that point, at the point that I had first told him to stop and drop it. So he actually advanced that far on me at that time'.
Inspector Scott said if she hadn't backed up Cauchi would have landed on top of her.
'The way he'd fallen, the knife was actually underneath him, so I couldn't see it, and I knew I needed to secure it.
'I wasn't sure if I had completely incapacitated him enough, but I knew I just had to bite the bullet and essentially make sure that that weapon was secure.'
Inspector Scott's third bullet made contact with a large pot plant behind which a woman with a pram had been hiding.
Before shooting Cauchi, Inspector Scott had signalled with her hand and 'mouthed to her to run'.
Dr Dwyer observed: 'I know you've been commended previously for this, and you don't have to commend yourself, but you effectively directed away the civilian that was standing there with the pram, and if you hadn't done that, she may well have been injured, or a child, by the ricochet?'
In keeping with her modest assessment of her own heroics that day, Inspector Scott answered: 'Maybe'.
What she was more focused on getting across was her appreciation and admiration for everyone else.
'I wanted to mention my colleagues and my team on the day,' she told the courtroom packed with journalists. I said earlier we ask a lot of young police, and I think we as a society think that police don't feel fear, don't feel the burden and pressures of what everyday humans do, and I can assure you that they do.
'I can assure you on that day that they were fearful running in, and while I was the person that faced Joel, those young officers ran in with the exact same intentions.'
Inspector Scott, who returned to work in a matter of weeks, said she wanted to acknowledge the courage and bravery of her colleagues, some who haven't been able to return to work.
'They have my wholehearted support, love and care, and … I hope that the public does understand that they were absolutely extraordinary.'
'They saved lives on that day. We did unfortunately lose the lives of six beautiful people but they saved lives and they put themselves at risk.
'And contrary to how well people think we are trained, we still feel fear, but they still went in there, so I want to acknowledge them in that space.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
17 minutes ago
- ABC News
Former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz committed to stand trial for war crimes charge of murder
A former special forces trooper will be the first Australian soldier to stand trial for a war crimes charge, more than 13 years after he shot dead a villager in an Afghan field. Former SAS trooper Oliver Schulz, 43, was charged in 2023 with the war crime of murder after helmet-cam footage aired on the ABC's Four Corners showed him in 2012 shooting Afghan man Dad Mohammad. Local court Magistrate Greg Grogin today committed Mr Schulz to stand trial in the NSW Supreme Court, after previously condemning delays from Commonwealth prosecutors. Mr Schulz faced a committal hearing in April and May, in which the local court heard from Australian Defence Force (ADF) witnesses and repeatedly watched footage of the killing. Mr Schulz could face life in jail if found guilty. The killing was first publicly revealed in March 2020 by ABC Investigations and Four Corners, sparking a three-year criminal investigation. The court heard that the footage, from the helmet camera of a dog handler on Mr Schulz's patrol, showed an SAS dog attacking Dad Mohammad in a wheat field during an ADF mission in Uruzgan Province, in southern Afghanistan. The dog is then called off and Mr Schulz is seen training his weapon on Dad Mohammad, who is lying on the ground. The soldier is heard asking three times: "You want me to drop this c***?" He then fires three shots at the man. Mr Mohammad was in his 20s and a father of two girls — a newborn and toddler — at the time of his death. He had a condition that stunted growth in one leg. ABC Investigations and Four Corners identified the dead man and tracked down his father and brother during their investigation. Afghan villagers first complained to the ADF about the killing months after the 2012 raid. However, ADF investigators cleared Mr Schulz, concluding that Dad Mohammad was lawfully killed because he posed a direct threat to the Australians. Investigators were told the Afghan man was holding a radio and "tactically manoeuvring". Mr Schulz will face the Supreme Court in October for arraignment. Under the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a killing constitutes the war crime of murder if the victim is not a combatant or is out of action due to injury or damage. Prosecutors must also prove that the perpetrator knew, or was reckless to, this fact. The killing does not constitute a war crime if it occurred as a result of an attack on a military objective, during which the perpetrator did not expect excessive civilian casualties.
ABC News
17 minutes ago
- ABC News
DV royal commission recommends corporal punishment ban
Corporal punishment including smacking has been used as an excuse for "awful abuse" and should be outlawed, a royal commissioner says. South Australia's Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence publicly released 136 recommendations on Tuesday. One of those recommendations was a ban on parents or caregivers using corporal punishment. Royal commissioner and former senator Natasha Stott Despoja said young children told the commission there was a "double standard". "We tell young people and children that it's not OK to hit or smack and yet it's still considered an appropriate form of discipline," she told ABC News. The royal commission recommended the Attorney-General ban the use of corporal punishment by amending or repealing the defence of reasonable chastisement. "The reasonable chastisement defence relies on the use of force being not motivated by rage, malice or personal gratification, and that the punishment be reasonable for a child's age, size and health," the report finds. "Physical punishment, including beatings, slaps or threats, was often presented as acceptable parenting behaviour as a way of 'correcting behaviour' or 'teaching respect' and was often reinforced by religious, generational or cultural norms. "This made it difficult for the young people interviewed to determine 'whether what they experienced counted as abuse'. Another young person said parents or caregivers might think they were disciplining a child but what they were actually doing was "beyond discipline". Ms Stott Despoja said she did not think the ban was a "controversial" recommendation but she understood "people have strong feelings and I respect that". "I know a lot of people would say 'a rap on the knuckles or the wooden spoon', it's not just about the act itself, it's the symbolism that we say in Australia today you can hit a child to discipline them," she said. "Surely there are better ways." The findings reported more than 65 countries have outlawed the practice and that Australia was an "outlier". Researchers found in 2023 Australia's failure to outlaw the smacking of children violates the the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child treaty. The Queensland Law Reform Commission is this year considering the criminal code's domestic discipline defence, but Premier David Crisafulli said the government should not tell guardians how to parent. SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher told ABC Radio Adelaide current law states any physical force to a person, including a child, is considered an assault. He said the reasonable chastisement defence permits parents or guardians "to administer moderate and reasonable physical punishment to children in their care for correcting behaviour". Mr Maher said courts take into account different circumstances such as "the age, size, health of the child, the nature of the physical intervention and community standards". "That sort of corrective smacking today is very limited. It's moderate and reasonable force, and it depends on its nature of the acts involved, the level of force, et cetera," he said. "We have evolved with community standards and norms over time." Mr Maher said behaviour such as uncontrolled rage and physical abuse of a child was "not reasonable corrected behaviour" and "absolutely would not be covered by what is the common law defence at the moment". The Attorney-General said he had previously spoken with the premier when the topic arise "from time to time" but "no government has seen fit to progress amendments previously". He said the government would consider this and the remaining 135 recommendations carefully.
ABC News
17 minutes ago
- ABC News
Bruce Lehrmann's appeal against defamation case begins
Bruce Lehrmann has returned to the Federal Court in Sydney today for an appeal he hopes will overturn the finding that - on the balance of probabilities - he raped Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in Canberra in 2019.
