![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/9de0520dfa66ace6ecad04bce40b1b90.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nPanic took hold in a section of a Canberra shopping centre on Friday evening after a group of teenagers brandished knives and a hammer.<\/p>\n
ACT police were called to the Canberra Centre, one of the city’s major shopping centres, about 6:20pm after reports of youths involved in a disturbance.<\/p>\n
One witness told the ABC he saw four or five young men yelling at each other and threatening each other with “big” knives.<\/p>\n
“I was sh**ing myself,” he said. “It was pretty scary.”<\/p>\n
He said one also had a hammer, which was thrown “at full force” and hit a shop window.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A witness told the ABC one of the young people had a hammer, which they threw at a shop window. (ABC News: Pokuah Frimpong)<\/p>\n
The witness said after the hammer was thrown, the youths ran off.<\/p>\n
“It was all over in 30 seconds,” he said.<\/p>\n
Another witness, who was in a nearby shop at the time, said someone yelled, “Oh my God, he has a machete.”<\/p>\n
“We ran to the back room of the shop,” the witness said.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t know if it was safe to come out.”<\/p>\n
A woman, who did not see the young people, said as she arrived at the centre around 6:20pm she saw businesses pulling their roller doors down.<\/p>\n
She said she went into one of the stores before its shutters were down, to be locked in with the staff and other customers.<\/p>\n
“Everyone had their doors closed and were locked in,” she said.<\/p>\n
“[I was] concerned it was another Bondi Junction moment.”<\/p>\n
The centre was busy at the time for late-night shopping.<\/p>\n
An ACT Policing spokesperson said in a statement that no injuries had been identified, and there was no ongoing threat to the community.<\/p>\n
A Canberra Centre spokesperson said the centre was “supporting ACT police with an ongoing investigation following a security incident earlier this evening”.<\/p>\n
“We are grateful there were no reported injuries and are advised a number of arrests have already been made,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“Additional security resources are being deployed to support a heightened presence across the centre.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panic took hold in a section of a Canberra shopping centre on Friday evening after a group of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2666,42182,2667,98710,167740,279339,96506,43,4895,37957,111193,44,1158,14622,7240,3069,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-567899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-act","tag-act-policing","tag-canberra","tag-centre","tag-civic","tag-disturbance","tag-hammer","tag-headlines","tag-incident","tag-knife","tag-mall","tag-news","tag-police","tag-shop","tag-shopping","tag-teenagers","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}