Friends and family of Ashlee Good, who was murdered at the Westfield Bondi Junction massacre on Saturday, have choked up as they left flowers at a makeshift memorial.
“It’s just a travesty,” said one local at the memorial on Oxford Street, close to Westfield, in the eastern Sydney suburb.
“It’s obviously someone who is very ill hopefully it will bring people together”.
Ms Good, 38, was one of six people killed during Joel Cauchi’s rampage, in which he stormed through the Westfield shopping centre stabbing people with a knife.
The other victims have been identified as Yixuan Cheng, Pikria Darchia, Dawn Singleton, Faraz Tahir, Jade Young and Ashlee Good.
Ms Good’s nine-month-old baby Harriet was also attacked. The child is recovering in hospital and has been moved out of the intensive care unit, NSW Health has confirmed.
Some of the slain mum’s friends and family visited the memorial at Bondi Junction on Tuesday, which has expanded into a vast display of flowers and messages of support.
People could be seen hugging, lighting candles and laying bunches of flowers at the site in the centre of the pedestrianised mall.
“What she’s done is the instincts that mothers do to protect their children,” one tearful mourner told 9News.
A fundraiser for Harriet, set up with the approval of the Good family, has secured more than $500,000, blowing past its original $100,000 target.
Ms Good’s family released a statement after her death praising her as “a beautiful mother, daughter, sister, partner, friend, all around outstanding human and so much more”.
“We appreciate the well-wishes and thoughts of members of the Australian public who have expressed an outpouring of love for Ashlee and our baby girl.
“We would also like to thank the New South Wales Police for their kindness and diligence in this tragedy and emergency services for getting our baby the care she needed as quickly as possible.
“To the two men who held and cared for our baby when Ashlee could not – words cannot express our gratitude.
The Good family statement added that they “were struggling to come to terms with what has occurred”.
On Monday, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said it was obvious to her and detectives that the killer had focused on women and avoided men during the attack.
“The videos speak for themselves, don’t they? That’s certainly a line of inquiry for us. It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that it seems to be an area of interest that the offender had focused on women and avoided the men,” Ms Webb told ABC News Breakfast.
“We don’t know what was operating in the mind of the offender and that’s why it’s important now that detectives spend as much time interviewing those who know him, were around him, close to him, so we can get some insight into what he might have been thinking,” Ms Webb said.