A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police 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, the AP reports. The teen, whom police described as white, per CNN, attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters on 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 in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back. He was taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition, a police statement said.
Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch said members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with police about the boy's behavior before Saturday. The Imam of Perth's largest mosque, the Nasir Mosque, condemned the stabbing. "There is no place for violence in Islam," Imam Syed Wadood Janud said in a statement. Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organization agents have been conducting a counterterrorism investigation in the east coast city of Sydney since another 16-year-old boy stabbed an Assyrian Orthodox bishop and priest in a church on April 15. That boy has been charged with committing a terrorist act and six of his alleged associates have also been charged with a range of offenses, including conspiring to engage in or planning a terrorist act. Police so far see no ties between the Perth incident and that group, per ABC.
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