A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife has been shot dead by police after stabbing a man in Perth, on Australia’s west coast.
The incident happened Saturday evening in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton.
The teenager attacked the man then lunged at police before being shot dead, Western Australia Prime Minister Roger Cook told reporters on Sunday.
“There are indications that he was radicalized online,” Mr. Cook told a news conference.
“But I want to reassure the community at this stage it appears he acted solely and alone,” he added.
A man in his thirties was found on site with a back injury. He was taken to hospital in serious but stable condition, a police statement said.
Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) officers have been conducting a counterterrorism investigation in Sydney on the east coast since another 16-year-old boy stabbed an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and priest in a church on 15 april.
This boy was accused of committing a terrorist act. Six of his alleged associates were also charged with various offenses, including conspiracy to commit or plan a terrorist act. All remain in detention.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was briefed on the latest stabbing in Perth by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw and ASIO chief executive Mike Burgess, who leads the the country’s main domestic spy agency.
“I was told there was no ongoing threat to the community based on the information available,” Mr 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 violence, Western Australian Police Commissioner Colonel Blanch said.
The boy was participating in a program for young people at risk of radicalization, Mr. Blanch added.
-“I don’t want to say that he was radicalized or that he is radicalized because I think that’s part of the investigation,” he said.
Police said they were alerted by a phone call from a member of the public that a stabbing attack was in progress in the car park.
Three police officers intervened, one armed with a pistol and two with Taser guns.
Police deployed both Tasers, but were unable to incapacitate the boy before he was killed with a single gunshot, Blanch said.
Mr Blanch said members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with police about the boy’s behavior before he was killed on Saturday.
The imam of Perth’s largest mosque, the Nasir Mosque, condemned the stabbing attacks.
“There is no place for violence in Islam,” Imam Syed Wadood Janud said in a statement.
“We appreciate the efforts of the police to keep our communities safe. I would also like to commend the local Muslim community who had already reported the individual to the police,” Mr Wadood added.
Some Muslim leaders have criticized Australian police for declaring last month’s church attack a terrorist act, but not the carnage two days earlier at a Sydney shopping center in which six people were killed and a dozen injured.
The 40-year-old attacker in the mall attack has been shot dead by police. Police have not yet revealed the man’s motive.
The attack on a church is only the third to be classified by Australian authorities as a terrorist act since 2018.
In December 2022, three Christian fundamentalists shot dead two police officers and a bystander in an ambush near the community of Wieambilla, Queensland state. The attackers were later killed by police.
In November 2018, a Somali-born Muslim man stabbed three pedestrians in Melbourne’s city centre, killing one, before police shot him dead.
