Australian Police Shoot Dead 16-Year-Old Boy After He Stabbed Man

A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife has been shot dead by police in Australia. The teenager was shot after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said Sunday.The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night, VOA reports.

The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters Sunday. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference. “But I want to reassure the community at this stage it appears that he acted solely and alone,” Cook added.

A man was found at the scene with stab wounds to his back. According to Australian Broadcasting Corp., he was taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition. On April 15, a 16-year-old boy stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the Sydney suburb of Wakefield while giving a live-streamed sermon. Australian police later said the boy and six of his alleged associates had been charged with terrorism-related offences following the stabbing of the Assyrian Christian bishop. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been briefed on the latest stabbing in Perth by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw and ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess, who heads the nation’s main domestic spy agency. “I’m advised there is no ongoing threat to the community on the information available,” Albanese said. “We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia,” he added. Police received an emergency phone call after 10 p.m. from a teenager saying he was going to commit acts of violence, Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch said. The boy had been participating in a program for young people at risk of radicalization, Blanch added. “I don’t want to say he has been radicalized or is radicalized because I think that forms part of the investigation,” he said. Police said they were later alerted by a phone call from a member of the public that a knife attack was underway in the parking lot. Three police officers responded, one armed with a gun and two with conducted energy devices. Police deployed both conducted energy devices but they failed to incapacitate the boy before he was killed by a single gunshot, Blanch said. Some Muslim leaders have criticized Australian police for declaring last month’s church stabbing a terrorist act but not a rampage two days earlier in a Sydney shopping mall in which six people were killed and a dozen wounded. The 40-year-old attacker in the mall attack was shot dead by police. Police have yet to reveal the man’s motive. The church attack is only the third to be classified by Australian authorities as a terrorist act since 2018.