Police in Perth, Australia, shot dead a 16-year-old boy who stabbed a man in a parking lot and officials said he was on their radar for suspected extremist tendencies.
The shooting happened shortly after 10pm on Saturday and happened after Western Australia state police received a call from a man saying he was about to commit an act of violence, Police Commissioner Col Blanch said. learned during a press conference on Sunday morning. Residents also reported to the police that the teenager was holding a knife and police were dispatched to the scene.
This incident comes just weeks after two knife attacks shocked Australia. ONE Mass stabbing in shopping mall in Sydney killed six people and injured at least a dozen on April 13. Days later, a 15-year-old boy was arrested in the case stabbed to death an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and several others in what police said was an act of terrorism.
Commissioner Blanch said on Saturday in Perth, two officers who confronted the teenager pulled out tasers and a gun. They tried to persuade him to put down the knife but he did not and rushed at one of the officers.
After the officer fired the taser, the suspect continued to advance toward the officer carrying the gun, who then shot and killed him. The teenager died an hour later at the hospital.
Before confronting police, the suspect stabbed a middle-aged man in the parking lot. Authorities said the victim was stabbed in the back and was in serious but stable condition.
The suspect, an unidentified white man, was known to police over the past few years for his violent extremist tendencies, officials said. But they concluded that in Saturday’s attack “it appears he acted alone and alone”, according to Roger Cook, the Western Australian prime minister.
“It was a very tragic event in Western Australia,” Commissioner Blanch said at a press conference on Sunday.
“We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia.” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said posted to X in response to Saturday’s episode.
