Knife attack in Australia, 'radicalized' 16-year-old shot dead by police

A 16-year-old teenager "radicalisé" and suffering from mental disorders was é shot dead on Saturday evening by police in the suburbs of Perth, in Western Australia, after wounding a person during a knife attack, reportedé authorities on Sunday.

The teenager, armed with a knife, “rushed” at the police and was fatally shot by an agent, said the Prime Minister of the state of Western Australia Roger Cook at a press conference.

“There are indications that he was radicalized online. But I want to reassure the population, “At this point it appears he acted alone,” Mr Cook said.

Police received a call on Saturday evening from a man warning that “he was going to commit “acts of violence” but without giving his name or location, the head of the state police, Col Blanch, told journalists.

A few minutes later, he added, police received an emergency call warning them that a “man with a knife was running” at a parking lot in Willetton, in the southern suburbs of Perth.

The individual was armed with a 30 centimeter long kitchen knife and according to images from a police body camera, the teenager refused to put it on the ground as requested by the police. order, indicated Mr. Blanch.

The agents fired two electric pulse pistols but “neither of them had completely the desired effect” , he related.

A police car in a western Sydney neighborhood on April 16, 2024 © AFP – DAVID GRAY

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“The man continued to advance towards (an officer) with a firearm who fired a single shot and mortally wounded” the individual, said the police official. The teenager died in hospital later that night.

– “Online radicalization” –

The “mature” man injured by a single stab wound during the attack is in a “serious” but stable condition, said the police official.

Police believe the teenager sent messages to members of the Muslim community who immediately notified the police, he explained without disclosing information about their content.

The teenager had “mental health problems but also problems with online radicalization”, according to the same source.

In recent years, the attacker was monitored as part of a program to combat violence and extremism.

“It's not about an approach based on the criminal dimension, it is a program aimed at helping individuals who express ideologies of concern to our community”, explained Mr. Blanch.

The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese explained that he had been kept informed of the facts by the police and the intelligence services according to whom there was no “ongoing threat”.

“We are a nation committed to peace and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia,” Mr Albanese wrote on social media.

< p>Violent crime is rare in Australia, but this incident comes less than a month after another stabbing attack which left six people dead in a shopping center in Sydney (south-east).

The perpetrator of this attack, Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old man suffering from mental illness, was shot dead by the police. His parents said their son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 17, then left their home in Queensland (north-east) and abandoned treatment.

< p>Two days after this attack in a shopping center, a bishop of an Assyrian church was also stabbed during a sermon broadcast live in a church in Sydney. The victim survived his injuries. A 16-year-old boy has since been charged with a “terrorist act”.

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