Police couldn't affirm witness accounts that the man had lurched at police with a knife before officers opened flame on him.

Witnesses asserted the man had been shouting and yelling at the officers, before they shot him in the stomach.

It is trusted two of the three onlookers, ladies aged 82 and 65, are in a steady condition in clinic.

The Hornsby Organic Food Market was being held outside at the mall at the season of the shooting, and numerous customers were accumulated around slows down that had been set up around the wellspring.

Footage posted on online networking demonstrated a man lying on the ground by the shopping mall's wellspring, as police stand around him with their weapons drawn.

The shooting occurred between the shopping mall's wellspring and James Yeom's Gelatissimo shop.

A blood-soaked chair at the Brasserie Bread stand at Westfield Hornsby, where people were injured after police opened fire on a man with a knife. Photo: Janie Barrett

In the minutes prior to the shooting, Mr Yeom called police after he saw a man strolling around with a knife. He said the man was not wearing shoes and seemed, by all accounts, to be influenced by liquor.

"He didn't look forceful, he was gradually moving around, however it didn't look right," said Mr Yeom, who was just meters far from the man.

[He] looked a tad bit tipsy ... didn't appear to be ordinary and that is the reason I called the police, since he was holding a knife."

Mr Yeom said the man was "circling yet not fleeing" when stood up to by the police, but rather he couldn't see plainly on the grounds that he was holing up behind a business sector slow down.

"I don't know whether he was attempting to escape or being threatening, yet he was circling," he said.

"He wasn't making much clamor, he wasn't stating anything, it was truly bizarre."