COPS shot dead a “radicalised” 16-year-old boy who stabbed a man in a car park.
The teenager wounded the victim, 30, before he “rushed” at police and was hit by tasers and then a fatal shot last night in Perth, Australia.
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Western Australian Premier Roger Cook said there were “indications he had been radicalised online”.
He added this morning: “But I want to reassure the community at this stage it appears he acted solely and alone.”
Late on Saturday, police received a call from a male warning them he was going to commit “acts of violence” – but he did not give his name or location.
Within minutes, another emergency call alerted police that a “male with a knife was running around a car park” of a hardware store in Willetton, a southern suburb of Perth.
Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the police body camera images showed the teenager refused officers’ demands for him to put down the knife.
The weapon was a one foot kitchen knife, believed to be from the attacker’s home, he said.
Officers fired two Tasers at him but “both of them did not have the full desired effect,” he added.
“The male continued to advance on the third officer with a firearm who fired a single shot and fatally wounded the male.”
We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia
Australian PM Anthony Albanese
The teenager died in hospital later in the night, he said.
The victim who had been stabbed was in a “serious” but stable condition and appeared to be doing well, the police commissioner said.
The man had suffered a single, “possibly” two centimetre stab wound that may have punctured a lung.
Police believe the teenager sent “relevant messages” to some members of the Muslim community who immediately called police, he said, without giving details of the messages.
The boy had “mental issues but also online radicalisation issues”, the police chief said.
In the past two years, the attacker had been part of a “countering violence extremism programme” for people who show signs of “religious or issues-motivated” concerns, he said.
Police said they did not know what had triggered the attack.
Blanch said it had the “hallmarks” of a terrorist incident but he was not making an official declaration right now as he had no concerns about a wider network being involved.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been briefed by police and intelligence services who had advised there was no “ongoing threat”.
“We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia,” he said in a message on social media.
The Perth attack comes less than a month after a knife-wielding assailant killed six people in a shopping mall in Sydney.
Joel Cauchi, 40, attacked 17 people – three men and 14 women – during his horror rampage.
The mentally ill knifeman was then tracked down, shot and killed by a police inspector.
Cauchi’s parents say he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17 but stopped taking medication, later leaving their Queensland home and dropping out of treatment.
Two days after the mall attack an Assyrian Christian bishop was brutally stabbed during a live streamed service in western Sydney.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel has since recovered and a 16-year-old suspect has been charged with committing “a terrorist act”.
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