Brian McDonald
Australian police shot and killed a 16-year-old boy armed with a knife after he stabbed a man in an attack that bore the “hallmarks” of terror, authorities said Sunday.
The incident occurred in the car park of a hardware store in Willetton, a suburb of the west coast city of Perth, on Saturday night.
Police said they received an emergency call after 10pm from a teenager saying he was going to commit acts of violence, Col Blanch of the Western Australian Police Commission said in a statement. Press conference Sunday.
Police said they were later alerted by a phone call from a member of the public that a knife attack was taking place in the car park. Three officers responded, one armed with a gun and two with conducted energy devices.
The teenager, who was described only as a 16-year-old Caucasian male, attacked the man and then ran at officers before being shot.
Police used both conducted energy devices but were unable to incapacitate the boy before he was killed by a single gunshot, Blanch said.
A 30-year-old man was found at the scene with a stab wound to the back. He was taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition, a police statement said.
Blanch said the incident had the “hallmarks” of a terrorist attack, adding that it “meets the criteria or at least the definition” of this type of crime.
He said members of the local Muslim community raised concerns to police about the boy’s behavior before he was killed on Saturday.
The teenager was participating in a program for young people at risk of radicalization, Blanch added.
“There is evidence he has been radicalized online,” Western Australian Prime Minister Roger Cook said during a press conference.
“But I want to reassure the community that at this stage it appears he acted alone,” Cook added.
Police and agents from the Australian Security Intelligence Organization have been conducting a counter-terrorism investigation in the east coast city of Sydney since another 16-year-old boy stabbed an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and priest in a church. on April 15.
This boy was accused of committing a terrorist act. Six of him alleged associates were also charged with a range of crimes, including conspiracy to participate in or plan a terrorist act. All remain in custody.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitterthat he was briefed on the latest stabbing in Perth by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw and ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess, who heads the country’s main domestic spy agency.
“I have been advised that there is no ongoing threat to the community based on the information available,” Albanese said.
“We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia,” he added.
Perth’s largest Imam mosque, the Nasir Mosque, condemned the stabbing.
“There is no place for violence in Islam,” Imam Syed Wadood Janud said in a statement.
“We appreciate the efforts of the police to keep our communities safe. I also want to commend the local Muslim community who flagged down the individual before the police,” Wadood added.
Some Muslim leaders have criticized Australian police for declaring last month’s church stabbing a terrorist act but not a violent attack that occurred two days earlier in a Sydney Mall in which six people were killed and a dozen were injured. The 40-year-old attacker in the mall attack was shot dead by police. Police have not yet revealed the man’s motive.
The church attack is only the third to be classified by Australian authorities as a terrorist act since 2018.
In December 2022, three Christian fundamentalists shot dead two police officers and a passerby in an ambush near the community of Wieambilla in the state of Queensland. The shooters were later killed by police.
In November 2018, a Somali-born Muslim stabbed three pedestrians in central Melbourne, killing one, before police shot him dead.
