The police in Perth, Australia, fatally shot a 16-year-old boy who had stabbed a man in a parking lot and who officials said had been on their radar for suspicion of having extremist tendencies.
The shooting happened shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday, and occurred after the police in Western Australia state received a call from a male saying he was going to commit acts of violence, Police Commissioner Col Blanch said at a news conference on Sunday morning. Members of the public had also alerted the police that the teenager was wielding a knife, and officers were dispatched to the scene.
The episode comes just weeks after two stabbing attacks alarmed Australia. A mass stabbing in a 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 stabbing of an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and several other people during a mass that the police said was an act of terrorism.
On Saturday in Perth, the two officers who arrived to confront the teenager drew their tasers and a firearm, Commissioner Blanch said. They tried to convince him to drop his knife, but he did not comply and rushed at one of the officers.
After the officers fired their tasers, the suspect continued to advance toward the officer carrying the firearm, who then fatally shot him. The teen died an hour later at the hospital.
Before his confrontation with the police, the suspect had stabbed a middle-age male in the parking lot. The victim, who suffered a stab wound to the back, was in serious but stable condition, the authorities said.
The police said the suspect, a white male whose identity was not released, had been known to the police for the last few years for having potentially violent extremist tendencies, officials said. But they concluded that in Saturday’s attack “it appears he acted solely and alone,” according to Roger Cook, the premier of Western Australia.
“It’s a very tragic event in Western Australia,” Commissioner Blanch said at the news conference Sunday.
“We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia.” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in a post on X in response to Saturday’s episode.
