Two French tradies who faced down the Westfield Bondi knifeman on Saturday are being hailed as heroes on social media.
Footage has gone viral over the weekend of the pair fending off a knife-wielding Joel Cauchi during this weekend’s brutal Bondi stabbings as bystanders ran to safety.
Damien Guerot and his friend Silas Despreaux, a French tradie from Randwick, were on their way to the gym when they spotted the man stabbing innocent people who were trying to flee the multi-storey shopping precinct.
In incredible scenes caught on camera by surrounding shoppers, the brave tradies sprung into action, charging into the fray with bollards in hand in an attempt to stop Cauchi in his tracks.
A determined Mr Guerot was able to use his makeshift weapon to hold the crazed killer back on an escalator, stopping him from reaching an area where dozens of children were playing on the first days of the school holiday.
“We tried to catch him but he was going down the stairs,” Mr Guerot later told 7News.
“Then we saw him going down so we followed him from the top. We tried to maybe throw the bollard to him but we couldn’t.
“We didn’t think. You cannot think in that moment.”
Mr Despreaux grabbed another bollard and confronted the killer at another time during the attack.
According to later reports, Mr Guerot and Mr Despreaux were also the pair who led heroic NSW Police officer Amy Scott to the killer’s location, where she ended his rampage with three shots to the chest.
‘She was actually the hero, she did the job,’ added Guerot.
Now dubbed the “Bollard Man” online, thousands of grateful Aussies have taken to social media to applaud Mr Guerot for his lifesaving heroics.
“This guy, trying to hold back a murderer with a bollard truly is a hero,” wrote one user.
“What a hero. You deserve a medal for your courage and bravery,” said another.
Premier Chris Minns thanked the pair personally for their actions on Sunday morning.
“It has been incredible to see complete strangers jump in, run towards the danger, put their own lives in harm’s way to save someone that they’ve never met before,” Mr Minns said.
Six people lost their lives in the tragic event, including mother Amy Scott, 25-year-old Dawn Singleton, Architect and mother-of-two Jade Young, Georgian woman Pikria Darchia, Westfield guard Faraz Ahmad Tahir and Chinese student Yixuan Cheng.
A dozen other shoppers were injured. Four have since been discharged.
There are also calls from the public to reward the tradie, who is in the country on a temporary visa, by giving him citizenship.
