Police in Perth, Australia, shot dead a 16-year-old boy who had stabbed a man in a parking lot and who authorities said was on their radar for suspected extremist tendencies.
The shooting occurred shortly after 10 p.m. on Saturday and came after Western Australia state police received a call from a man saying he was going to commit violence, Police Commissioner Col Blanch said in a statement. press conference on Sunday morning. Members of the public also alerted police that the teenager was wielding a knife and officers were sent to the scene.
The episode comes just weeks after two knife attacks alarmed Australia. A mass stabbing at a Sydney shopping center killed six people and injured at least a dozen on April 13. Days later, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for stabbing an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and several others during a mass that police said was an act of terrorism.
In Perth on Saturday, the two officers who arrived to confront the teenager pulled out their Tasers and a firearm, Commissioner Blanch said. They tried to convince him to drop the knife, but he did not obey and lunged at one of the officers.
After the officers fired their Tasers, the suspect continued to advance toward the officer holding the firearm, who then fatally shot him. The teenager died an hour later at the hospital.
Prior to his confrontation with police, the suspect had stabbed a middle-aged man in the parking lot. The victim, who suffered a stab wound to the back, is in serious but stable condition, authorities said.
Police said the suspect, a white man whose identity was not released, was known to police in recent years to have potentially violent extremist tendencies, authorities said. But they concluded that in Saturday’s attack “it appears that he acted solely and exclusively,” according to Roger Cook, Western Australia’s premier.
“This is a very tragic development in Western Australia,” Commissioner Blanch said at Sunday’s media conference.
“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.