‘Bollard man’ didn’t know what was happening when he took on Joel Cauchi

Two French construction workers at the shops on a Saturday afternoon have become unlikely heroes after they were filmed attempting to stop Joel Cauchi’s murderous rampage at Bondi Junction.

Damien Guerot and Silas Despreaux, both construction workers employed by a small building firm on the North Shore, were at the shopping centre when Cauchi, 40, stabbed six people to death inside the eastern suburbs Westfield before being killed by a single shot from a senior police officer.

Footage from the shopping centre under siege shows Guerot standing at the top of an escalator brandishing a bollard as Cauchi advances; later video appears to show him wielding a metal cafe chair as he and other bystanders sprint after Inspector Amy Scott towards Cauchi.

“I just see someone do something crazy,” he said.

“We tried to catch him but he was going down the stairs, then we saw him going down so we followed, tried to maybe throw the bollard at him but we couldn’t,” Guerot told Seven News.

“The eyes was like empty eyes, he wasn’t there,” he said of Cauchi, then praising the police officer who fired the fatal shot.

“She was actually the hero, she did the job,” Guerot said.

A clip uploaded to social media shows the man standing at the top of an escalator, holding the bollard up in the air like a projectile, with its heavy base pointed toward the attacker, and moving toward him. Meanwhile, the attacker was moving up the stairs, clutching a knife. But the five-second clip does not show how the confrontation concluded.