Word co-chief executive Craig Moulton said he was "in disbelief" over the incident and was doing everything possible to support staff who were working at the shop on Thursday morning. Word Christian bookshop in Sunshine. Credit:Justin McManus "Their physical and emotional health is more important than business and we'll do what we can to help them through this horrific experience," he said. The two staff members who were on duty during the alleged attack were "doing OK" under the circumstances, he said. Mr Moulton declined say to whether the victim of the alleged assault was a member of staff.

"We've never had an attack or an offensive experience in one of our stores," he said of the Christian chain. "We're about helping people and building life and restoring people. For it to happen in our environment it's very distressing to us ... I'm just horrified." Mr Moulton said his thoughts and prayers were with Masa's family. "I just can't believe someone completely innocent, unrelated to the circumstance, has been a victim of such a horrific thing and they've done nothing wrong," he said. "It's just a really bad 24 hours in Victoria."

The company provided counselling for all staff and family members involved in the ordeal and the Sunshine store would be closed until staff were able to return to work, he said. Mr Moulton praised Salvation Army workers based next door to the bookshop for their "exceptional help in the situation". One of Word's regular customers, Connie, who would only give her first name, arrived at the shop on Friday afternoon to find the doors closed and fingerprint dust over the window. "I'm so shocked, that poor woman," she said, sobbing. Toni Leggett, who was shopping nearby with her daughters and grandson, said she bought six personal safety alarms on Thursday night.

"I thought to myself, 'It could have been one of my girls'," she said. "I've always been paranoid around this area. I've seen a few things gone on with domestic violence and violence on trains." There was a paranoia, she said, that stemmed from living in the area where Frankston serial rapist Paul Denyer had committed his crimes. Mrs Leggett's eldest daughter Ashley McKenzie, 22, who lives nearby with sister Tayla, 19, said she never leaves home alone. "We shouldn't have to live like this ... At the end of the day, no one has the right to someone else's body and end their life," she said.

The alleged rape was one of three separate incidents that Mr Price has been charged over that occurred on the morning he handed himself in, and little more than a day after the alleged murder of the Doncaster teenager on Tuesday night. Mr Price, who appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday morning, was also charged with robbing a 26-year-old man of his mobile phone on a Sunshine footbridge at 10am, and an attempted carjacking of an elderly man outside a public library in McCracken Street. Blood remains on the hand rail and the stairs of the footbridge, which runs from Sunshine train station. All three locations are within a couple of kilometres from the other.

Mr Price has been charged with two counts of robbery and three counts of common assault, as well as rape, over the three incidents.