This happened in the one place all mums should feel safe to take their babies.

On any given day, at shopping centres across the country, you’ll find mothers with prams pacing the long, fluorescent corridors. 

Yes, a lot of them are there because they’re doing the usual things like picking up groceries or buying the next size of baby clothes or meeting a friend for coffee. 

But the purpose of a shopping centre actually goes much deeper than that for a lot of new mums. 

The local shopping centre feels like a safe place. 

It’s usually the first place you feel brave enough to venture out on your own, just you and your newborn. 

It’s the place you can pace up and down comfortably when it’s raining, or too hot, or too cold to go outside. 

It’s the place you know the parents' room will be clean(ish). 

It’s the place you know you’ll probably get a sympathetic look from a stranger if your baby suddenly cracks it in the middle of the cafe. 

And it’s the place where you can be surrounded by other people at a time when you can often feel very alone.

But on Saturday, when 38-year-old first-time mum Ash Good took her nine-month-old baby girl to Westfield Bondi Junction, the one place she should’ve felt safe with her child became the scene of one of the most horrific and senseless mass killings we’ve seen in Australia. 

At around 3.20pm, emergency services were called to the eastern suburbs shopping complex with reports of a man — who has now been identified as a 40-year-old Queensland man — was armed with a knife and attacking shoppers, seemingly at random. 

Harrowing eye-witness reports detailed how the killer approached the first-time mum as she pushed her baby daughter (who we have chosen not to name) in her pram, leant inside and stabbed her. 

He then stabbed Ash. 

Severely injured and bleeding, Ash reportedly ran to two strangers, who turned out to be brothers, and "threw" the baby to them in a desperate attempt to save her child’s life as she fought for her own. 

"She handed us the baby and said 'please help, help'," one brother recounted, according to The Daily Telegraph. 

Using clothes from a nearby store to stem the bleeding, they tended to the baby while other shoppers attempted to help Ash. 

"We were doing everything we could for the child… and trying to call for help too," one brother said.

"I was trying to compress the baby to stop the blood… the mother had a lot of blood too."

Ash was rushed to St Vincent’s Hospital but died in the hours following the attack. 

#BREAKING: Live interview with man who helped a baby that had been stabbed during the Bondi Westfield attacks earlier today. #9News pic.twitter.com/W5vilq0FTJ

— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) April 13, 2024

At the time of publication, her baby girl remains in a critical condition at Sydney Children's Hospital after undergoing surgery. 

A further nine were in hospital with injuries. 

Ash was remembered as an "incredibly smart" and beloved osteopath by friend and Sky News reporter, Laura Jayes, when she was identified as one of the victims. 

"She has a beautiful circle of friends, she was an incredible athlete and she had the world at her feet," she told Sky News. 

"I just can't really get my head around it. It's just so cruel." 

Sadly, the news of a man deciding to murder a woman is not unusual to us. 

Already this year — before this attack — 18 women were allegedly murdered at the hands of men in Australia.

But the circumstances and the randomness in which this young mum lost her life has struck a particularly deep cord with people across the country.

Ash Good should’ve felt safe. 

Her nine-month-old baby should’ve been safe. 

The four other women and one man who lost their lives at the hands of a stranger should’ve felt safe. 

And so, like thousands of heartbroken people across Australia last night, I cried for this beautiful mum and her little girl that I'd never met as I watched my own baby sleeping soundly on the monitor next to me. 

And thought of all the times I paced the corridors of my local Westfield, feeling comforted by the strangers going about their days around me, never considering that something this tragic was even an option. 

I also thought of those who stepped up and maintained what little safety that shopping centre had left...

The brothers who tended to the baby.  

The man, now known as ‘bollard guy’, who bravely attempted to fight off the offender as he targeted more shoppers. 

And the female police officer who shot the offender when he raised his weapon at her, undoubtedly saving more lives. 

That is the only solace we can take in these tragic circumstances. 

That while Ash and her baby girl may have crossed paths with the worst kind of human that day, the other people surrounding them in the shopping centre — in those terrifying, unspeakable, tragic moments — were the ‘good guys’, the helpers. 

And Ash Good's baby is potentially alive today because of that. 

Feature image: Instagram.