Sydney student misidentified as Bondi attacker in viral online claims

Several posts on social media misidentify the Sydney mall attacker as a student named Benjamin Cohen. But police have confirmed the name of the attacker was Joel Cauchi. 

On 13 April, six people were killed in a mass stabbing at a shopping centre in Bondi Junction, Sydney. A baby injured in the attack was discharged from hospital on 21 April, while a further five people are still in hospital at the time of writing. Australian authorities are not treating the attack as an act of terrorism. 

In the aftermath of the incident [WARNING: distressing content], a claim spread on social media identifying the attacker as a 20-year-old Sydney student named Benjamin Cohen, and his name continues to be connected to the attack online.

A screenshot of Mr Cohen’s LinkedIn profile—including details about the subject he studies and his university—has been shared online with the caption: “Israeli coder named Benjamin Cohen stabs 7 people to death in Australia and suddenly every western news channel stops talking about it.” Another post says: “Terrorist that committed the knife attack in Sydney Benjamin Cohen, wonder what ethnicity he is?” 

However, this is not true. New South Wales Police confirmed the attacker was a 40-year-old man from Queensland named Joel Cauchi, who was shot dead by a police officer at the scene. The parents of Mr Cauchi have apologised for their son’s actions and said he had suffered from mental health problems.

Mr Cohen later said in a video that the experience of being misidentified was “highly distressing and disappointing”. His father, Mark Cohen, responded to the false claims on 13 April saying: “That’s my son and he’s alive and well and was not in Bondi.” 

Moreover, Mr Cohen was also wrongly named as the killer by Australian TV network, Channel Seven, both on air and online, and several posts went on to reference these reports. While Channel 7 has reportedly apologised for the mistake, which it said was due to “human error”, it has been reported that Mr Cohen may sue the network for defamation. 

According to ABC News, Channel 7 News removed the online version of its report wrongly naming Mr Cohen as the attacker at around 9:35am local time on 14 April. As part of our work fact checking content on Facebook’s platforms, Full Fact has only rated false claims made after this, on the afternoon of 14 April or later, UK time, several hours after Channel 7 had removed mention of him and after New South Wales Police confirmed the real attacker’s identity. You can find more of our fact checks of Facebook content on our website. 

This is not the first time Full Fact has seen an individual being wrongly connected to a situation they had nothing to do with, especially in the immediate aftermath of news events like this. 

We’ve previously written about a man whose picture was shared with claims he was a police officer who shot dead two dogs, as well as social media posts misidentifying US troops killed in an airstrike, false claims a photo shows an Israeli soldier who died by suicide but who was actually shot at a checkpoint, and about another man who was wrongly named as an asylum seeker who died aboard the Bibby Stockholm barge.