(Sydney) A “radicalized” 16-year-old teenager was shot dead by police in the suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, after injuring a person in a knife attack, the chief of police said. local government and police 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 during a ‘a press conference.
“There are indications that he was radicalized online. But I want to reassure the public, at this stage it appears he acted alone,” Mr Cook said.
Police received a call Saturday evening from a man warning that he was going to commit “acts of violence,” but without giving his name or location, the city’s police official told reporters. State, Col Blanch.
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.
According to images from a police body camera, the teenager refused to put his knife on the ground as requested by the police, Mr. Blanch said.
The officers fired two stun guns, but “neither had the desired effect,” he said.
“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, and the teenager died to the hospital later that night.
“Online radicalization”
The “mature” man injured in the knife attack is in “serious” but stable condition, the police official said.
The teenager had “mental health problems, but also problems with online radicalization”, according to the same source.
In recent years, the attacker was part of a program to combat violence and extremism.
“This is not 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.
Violent crime is rare in Australia, although the attack in the Perth suburb comes less than a month after another stabbing attack that left six people dead at a shopping center in Sydney (south-east).
The perpetrator of the attack, Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old mentally ill man, was found and then shot dead by police. Mr Cauchi’s parents said their son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 17, then left their home in Queensland (north-east) and abandoned treatment.
Two days after the shopping center attack, a bishop of an Assyrian church was also stabbed during a live-streamed sermon at a Sydney church. The victim survived his injuries. A 16-year-old boy has since been charged with a “terrorist act”.