5 Dead In Attack At Bondi Junction
It's all a bit chaotic atm. I wont bother with the article. 5 killed and one shot. Several in hospital.
5 Dead by stabbing.
Presumably it's the perpetrator shot.
More here...presumably not paywalled...
The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.
| Look Here -> |
Sadly 6th victim died in the hospital.
What a devastating disaster!
Feel horrible for all those now deceased and those otherwise harmed, who were doing nothing but enjoying an afternoon at the shops.
Hats off to the police inspector for her immediate response. Footage shows her running in, without backup, confronting and immediately stopping the threat.
Just awful.
Shows no one is immune if you are unlucky. John Singletons daughter among the dead...
The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.
...why this never surprises me....
5 Dead In Attack At Bondi Junction
Originally Posted by wotnot
Not sure what’s implied there wotnot. 3x more people than that are killed on Australian roads each year than are murdered, with more than 1/2 of those killed being innocent parties (passengers, not at fault driver, pedestrians, ect).
Statistically you are far more likely to die from the negligent actions of another driver in a motor vehicle collision than by murder.
Meet the killer
Channel Seven has been under the pump lately...but boy, when it goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong....
Channel 7 names innocent man Benjamin Cohen as Bondi Junction killer
By SOPHIE ELSWORTH and JAMES MADDEN and ALEXI DEMETRIADI
2:05PM APRIL 14, 2024
Channel 7 has blamed “human error” for identifying the wrong man as the knife-wielding murderer who killed six people at Sydney’s Bondi Junction Westfield on Saturday.
On the network’s official 7NEWS Australia YouTube account – which has 1.66 million subscribers – the channel published a report, led by presenters Monique Wright and Michael Usher, with a caption underneath that wrongly named Benjamin Cohen as the offender.
NSW Police subsequently named 40-year-old Joel Cauchi as the killer; Benjamin Cohen had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
The five-minute clip on Seven’s YouTube channel featured an interview by Sunrise host Matt Shirvington with security expert Scott Taylor outside the Sydney shopping centre.
The caption read: “Security expert Scott Taylor joins Weekend Sunrise as new details are confirmed about the attacker, Benjamin Cohen, and his victims.”
The video was online for more than one hour and attracted thousands of views.
After Seven was contacted by The Australian about the mistake the video clip was quickly deleted from its official YouTube channel.
A Seven spokesman said: “It was human error. The mistake has been rectified. Seven sincerely apologises for the error.”
The name Cohen is a common Jewish name, and means priest in Hebrew.
On Sunday, The Australian spoke to first-year UTS student Mr Cohen, who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs not far from Bondi Junction.
He said Seven’s mistake was “highly distressing” for him and his family.
“It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating misinformation like this without even the slightest thought put into fact checking,” he told The Australian.
“But what’s even more disappointing to me is a major news network doing this, using my name without waiting for a statement from police to verify this or going out to try and verify it themselves.
“This whole incident has been highly distressing and disappointing for myself and my family.
“And it’s quite disappointing to see how eager people were to ‘bandwagon’ on and spread this type of (misinformation) like wildfire.”
It later emerged that Cohen’s name was also published – in relation to the killings – in the comments section of Ten’s official TikTok account, and on the TikTok comments page of news.com.au, Nine News and the Daily Mail.
A spokesperson for Ten said: “It is network policy for comments to be disabled for stories of this nature. Unfortunately they were inadvertently left on. As soon as this was noticed, comments were disabled. We sincerely apologise for any distress this has caused.”
News.com.au has been approached for comment.
A spokesperson for news.com.au said: “We had comments disabled on social media posts and moderated heavily but unfortunately this was missed on TikTok.
“Comments were disabled as soon as we realised and we apologise for the error. News.com.au did not wrongly identify Benjamin Cohen as the offender in its coverage and was the first news outlet to speak to him this morning about his ordeal.”
Nine and the Daily Mail have been approached for comment.
At a press conference earlier on Sunday, NSW assistant police commissioner Tony Cooke formally identified the Bondi Junction perpetrator as Cauchi.
Seven journalist Robert Ovadia - from the same network that named the wrong man - asked the assistant commissioner: “Will you be looking at as an act of possible public mischief, the despicable possibility that somebody has put out to the media and on social media, a Jewish name, as the perpetrator of this to have perhaps thrown shade, on the mere possibility at the time, this could have been an act of terrorism?”
Cooke replied: “I don’t know what anyone’s motivations are but what I have been keen to do is clarify who we know has been engaged and I would just hope that people respect everybody’s privacy and respect people’s feelings in this matter.”
Seven’s website also published a story which falsely named the murderer as “40-year-old lone wolf attacker Benjamin Cohen”.
The reports follow the wide circulation of Cohen’s name on social media on Saturday night, and an image and caption of a man named Benjamin Cohen alongside another image of the murderer at the Bondi Junction shopping centre.
It’s not the first time in recent years that Seven has found itself in hot water over naming the wrong person in relation to a serious crime.
In 2022, Terrance Flowers, a 27-year-old Nyamal man from the town of Karratha, sued Seven after the network published his photograph in news broadcasts, an online article, a tweet and a Facebook post about the arrest of a different man in relation to the abduction of three-year-old WA girl Cleo Smith.
Seven apologised, and reached a confidential settlement with Flowers.
The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.
I hope Ben proceeds with legal action.
Agreed! It sounds like channel seven is trying to incite a racial or religious angle to these killings where, in reality, the bloke was mentally deranged. I'd not be surprised if he was either high, or has stopped his prescribed medication. I hope they are forced to pay and apologise, (maybe removal of their broadcast license, we can only hope)
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
As of today, he is taking legal action against Channel 7....and so he should. I hope he gets a lot!
Student Benjamin Cohen has taken legal action after being wrongly named as Bondi attacker
A university student wrongly named as the Bondi Junction knife-wielding murderer has taken legal action against Channel 7 after the network aired multiple live broadcasts labelling him as the culprit.
Benjamin Cohen, a first-year student at the University of Technology, Sydney, has engaged law firm Giles George and is seeking an apology, compensation and costs for serious harm after he was falsely named as the Bondi killer.
Under the NSW Defamation Act it can attract damages up to $459,000.
A concerns notice has been sent by Mr Cohen’s lawyers to Seven West Media chief executive officer and managing director James Warburton outlining that the network incorrectly identified Mr Cohen as the wrong man who killed six people, and not the actual killer, 40-year-old Queenslander Joel Cauchi.
Among those to wrongly name Mr Cohen included one of the network’s highest profile stars - Sunrise co-host Matt Shirvington - who told Weekend Sunrise viewers on Sunday the killer was “40-year-old Benjamin Cohen, dressed in a Kangaroos ARL jersey”, who was “shot and killed by a brave female officer.”
Shirvington’s comments were aired on the program at 6.05am AEST and then just 10 minutes later hosts Monique Wright and Michael Usher spoke with reporter Lucy McLeod in a live cross and she too wrongly named Cohen as the murderer.
“The attacker, 40-year-old Benjamin Cohen, is known to police,” she told viewers.
“His motives are not yet know, he was working on his own.”
Mr Cohen’s picture began circulating hours after the killings at Westfield Bondi Junction on social media platforms including X, formerly Twitter.
His image was shown on the platform alongside an image of the killer inside the shopping centre wielding a knife
NSW police did not name the killer until about 9am AEDT on Sunday.
Seven blamed “human error” on the multiple mistakes.
The fact that there's a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic flow.
fromaron (17-04-24)
What is also silly is the fact that people are targeting him as the perp, given that he was shot dead at the scene.
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