Chilling CCTV footage showing staff and shoppers hiding in backrooms while an attacker made his way through Bondi Junction Westfield on Saturday is emerging.
Six people were stabbed to death, five of which were women, by the attacker – 40-year-old Joel Cauchi.
Cauchi was shot dead by police in the mall when he lunged at an officer with his knife.
Video, obtained by ABC News, shows the moment a man - Michael Dunkley - shepherds his wife and staff away to a storeroom, yelling at others to join them in the secure area, as the incident unfolded.
Café staff are seen hiding behind the counter. A female worker crouching down grabs a knife, then puts it back down.
"My first reaction was I got the fight or flight reflex, and I obviously chose one over the other, and I don't know what I was going to do," Dunkley said.
He joined a group running alongside police officer Inspector Amy Scott then the knifeman appeared on a walkway.
Dunkley recalled the moment Inspector Scott faced Cauchi, telling him to drop the knife several times.
"He lunges straight away, didn't say a word, went straight at her," he said.
"If she didn't draw her firearm… she wouldn't have been here."
Meanwhile, in a hair salon people were panicking after hearing Inspector Scott's gun shots.
A staff member at Hair Royale, known as Bill, told 7 News how staff and customers hid in a back room after hearing those bangs.
"I heard the gunshots and I'm like, 'Oh my god, they're shooting, they've got guns. Go! Go!'," he said, at the time not knowing it was a police gun firing.
7 News shared a screenshot of them hiding.
Bill described the panic in that back room as the incident unfolded.
"The girls in the back, they're like, 'They're going to shoot us from the front, they're going to shoot us through the door, we're dead'.
"I'm like, 'Just relax, relax. It's OK, it's going to be OK' and the mum was like, 'Tell (my son) it's not real, tell him it's not real'. The son is screaming and I'm like, 'It's not real, relax, just hide, it's going to be OK'."
Floral tributes lay outside the mall, honouring those killed.
The victims killed in the attack were 25-year-old Chinese student Yixuan Cheng, 55-year-old artist Pikria Darchia, architect and mother-of-two Jade Young, security guard Faraz Tahir, 25-year-old daughter of a millionaire Australian businessman Dawn Singleton and 38-year-old first-time Ashlee Good, whose nine-month-old baby girl was also wounded in the attack.
Seventeen people were stabbed in the attack, of which 14 were women.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said it was obvious, based on videos, Cauchi targeted women.
