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06-05-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
PERTH/ SYDNEY: Western Australia police shot dead a “radicalized” 16-year-old boy on Saturday night after he stabbed a man in Perth.
State Premier Roger Cook said the teenager attacked a man and then “rushed” at police officers, armed with a kitchen knife.
The police responded by shooting him twice with Tasers before firing a single fatal shot. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton late Saturday night.
Police received calls from the local Muslim community warning that the attacker was going to commit “acts of violence” without giving his name or location, the state’s police commissioner, Col Blanch, told reporters.
Within minutes of the first warning call, another emergency call alerted authorities that a “male with a knife was running around the car park” in Willetton, he said.
Images from body cameras on the police personnel showed the teenager refused officers’ demands that he put down the knife.
Officers fired two Tasers at him but “both of them did not have the full desired effect,” he said. “The male continued to advance on the third officer with a firearm who fired a single shot and fatally wounded the male.”
The victim, who was stabbed in the back in the car park, was reported to be stable in the hospital.
“There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook said. The police, too, acknowledged that the attack had “hallmarks” of terrorism but “I want to reassure the community at this stage it appears that he acted solely and alone,” Cook added.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been briefed on the incident by police and intelligence agencies, which advised there was no ongoing threat to the community.
“We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia,” Albanese said on social media platform X.
Albanese thanked the police for “acting swiftly to contain the incident.”
The attack came weeks after the police in the state of New South Wales charged several boys with terrorism-related offenses for the stabbing of an Assyrian Christian bishop while he was giving a live-streamed sermon in Sydney.
Before that six people were stabbed to death in a shopping complex at the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi.
That said, gun and knife crime is considered rare in Australia, which consistently ranks among the safest nations in the world.
In last month, the Sydney shopping mall where six people were stabbed to death by a lone attacker five days ago was again made accessible the public on Thursday in a “slow reopening” meant to give people the chance to come to terms with the incident, which shocked Australia.
Shops in the Westfield mall in Bondi Junction remained closed for a “community reflection day” and will reopen properly only on Friday, with heightened security.
A candlelight vigil will also be held at nearby Bondi Beach on Sunday to mourn the victims, authorities said.
The shock caused by the mall attack in Sydney has been compounded by another stabbing attack on Monday in which a Christian bishop and priest were attacked and injured during a church service.
The reopening was meant as an opportunity for the public to show solidarity and express their condolences, as well as to “turn the page on what’s been a very difficult period” for the city, said New South Wales Premier Chris Morris.
