Amy Scott – the police officer who single-handedly stopped Joel Cauchi’s deadly stabbing rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction – has arrived at the inquest into the attack that claimed six lives.
Inspector Scott, who is currently battling a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, managed a small smile while wearing a bandana as she walked past the waiting media before greeting a colleague inside the building.
Inspector Scott ran to the fifth level of the Sydney shopping centre in 2024 after being alerted to the terrifying rampage.
She confronted Cauchi and fatally shot him in the chest when he refused to drop the knife.
Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan commended Inspector Scott’s ‘extraordinary’ bravery, saying her actions saved lives.
‘Inspector Amy Scott, whose heroism has been a centre piece of this inquest. Not only did she act unhesitatingly and with enormous courage and service…but she attended court throughout the inquest to provide comfort to others. She combined skill and compassion with great humility,’ Ms O’Sullivan said.
‘She now faces a health challenge… I wish her and her family all the very best for the road ahead.’
The coroner will determine if more could have been done in treating Cauchi when he lived in Toowoomba, Queensland, and afterwards when he moved to Brisbane.
Amy Scott – the police officer who single-handedly stopped Joel Cauchi’s deadly stabbing rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction – has arrived at the inquest into the attack that claimed six lives
Bondi Junction hero Amy Scott has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer earlier this year
Inspector chased and shot dead Joel Cauchi following his murderous rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction on April 13 2024 (pictured)
The 40-year-old had stopped taking antipsychotics before the move and did not find another psychiatrist in the state capital.
He was homeless at the time of the Westfield attack.
There were also claims of failures in the care provided by psychiatrist Andrea Boros-Lavack to treat Cauchi’s schizophrenia.
She treated Cauchi from 2012 to 2020 and in 2019 weaned him off the powerful medication Clozapine – considered the psychotropic drug of last resort to control severe ‘treatment-resistant’ schizophrenia.
It came after Cauc expressed a dislike of its side effects with included lack of motivation and a ‘blunting’ effect on his moods.
He also wanted to enjoy a sex life with women, and side effects of his medication included sexual dysfunction and deterioration of libido.
Dr Boros-Lavack rediagnosed Cauchi with ‘first episode’ schizophrenia, deeming it safe for him to cease taking Clozapine.
His mother, Michele Cauchi, contacted Dr Boros-Lavack’s private practice – called the Toowoomba Clinic – seven times in late 2019 and early 2020 to report that her son’s schizophrenic symptoms were returning after he was weaned off Clozapine.
Joel Cauchi’s psychiatrist has finally been unmasked as Dr Andrea Boros-Lavack (above). Dr Boros-Lavack took Cauchi off his anti-psychotic medication because he didn’t like the side effects despite the drugs successfully controlling his schizophrenia for years
His symptoms included hearing voices, leaving notes around the family home saying he was under the control of Satan or demons, his gait changing, extreme OCD and compulsively viewing pornography.
Dr Boros-Lavack prescribed another antipsychotic drug, Abilify, which he did not take.
Cauchi was still off his medication when he went into a ‘florid psychotic state’ and killed six people in his bloody rampage through the Westfield Shopping Centre in April 2024.
Dr Boros-Lavack initially told the inquest that Cauchi was not psychotic. Instead, she said that stabbing to death six people was ‘likely due to his sexual frustrations and hatred towards women’.
Dr Boros-Lavack’s assertion at the inquest that it was Cauchi’s misogyny that lay behind the Westfield rampage rather than psychosis drew gasps in the courtroom.
Despite offering her ‘sincere apologies’ and saying of the murders she was ‘sharing the pain, it has devastated me personally’, Dr Boros-Lavack replied: ‘I did not fail in my care of Joel and I refuse – I have no error on my behalf.’
However, in the witness box the following day, Dr Boros-Lavack withdrew the misogyny diagnosis as speculation rather than a clinical assessment.
‘It was conjecture on my part and I shouldn’t have speculated four years later after I completed his treatment,’ she told the court.
The six victims of Joel Cauchi’s psychosis-driven murderous rampage, clockwise from top left, Ashlee Good, Faraz Tahir, Dawn Singleton, Pakria Darchia and Yixuan Cheng
The inquest heard that people with treatment-resistant schizophrenia who are on Clozapine have a high relapse rate of 77 per cent after one year and 90 per cent after two years if they stop taking the medication.
The inquest also heard that Dr Boros-Lavack did not provide a detailed medical handover to Cauchi’s GP after he left her clinic in Toowoomba and moved to Brisbane in early 2020.
Australian Society of Psychiatrists executive director Pramudie Gunaratne hoped the recommendations would be a ‘turning point’ towards genuine mental health reform.
‘What we saw on that day was a young man who was seriously unwell but left in free fall without mental health support for four years,’ she told AAP.
‘The most gut-wrenching thing about all of this is that even after such an incredible tragedy, little seems to have changed.’
