Five weeks before Joel Cauchi armed himself with a knife and killed six people in a Bondi shopping centre, he sent his mum a video message.
"I walked in and my wife said, 'It looks like Joel'. I said, 'It does a bit', but he had his head down," Mr Cauchi said.Over and over they scrutinised the footage of a man in football clothes running through the shopping centre at Bondi Junction in Sydney's east, armed with a knife.At 8:30am on Sunday, NSW police announced the man responsible — shot dead by a police inspector inside the shopping centre — was 40-year-old Joel Cauchi from Queensland.
Cauchi's family said he excelled at school and in 2012 graduated from the University of Southern Queensland with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations and culture and language.Mrs Cauchi said her son's doctor took him off his medication over a number of years, carefully warning him of what might happen.
"I said to Joel, 'You can stay here as long as you like but you are not going to have these in my house' and so I took them off him, knowing that there was going to be pandemonium in my house but I was willing to put up with it," Mr Cauchi said.The next day, Cauchi drove down to Tweed Heads and bought himself another knife.The family is known to be religious.
He also advertised on at least three male escort sites and, in the days before his stabbing spree, was posting on social media.In January this year, he sought someone to help him learn about astrophotography at a dark sky site in Sydney, and in February posted a review about Sydney's Palm Beach, saying it was a beautiful spot with an amazing beach.
"Anyone who has got a relative with mental illness will understand medication doesn't make you feel very well.