CNN
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The 19-year-old being held by New York Metropolis police because the suspect in a New 12 months’s Eve machete assault in opposition to three law enforcement officials simply outdoors a Instances Sq. safety screening zone carried a handwritten diary that expressed his want to affix the Taliban in Afghanistan and die as a martyr, regulation enforcement sources stated.
Trevor Bickford stays in custody and below police guard at Bellevue Hospital, the place he’s being handled for a gunshot wound to the shoulder sustained throughout the assault, sources stated.
The three officers – injured at one among New York’s most high-profile occasions only a day after their division had warned of an “ISIS-Aligned” video calling for “Lone Offender Assaults” – have all been handled and launched, in keeping with the New York Police Division.
On Sunday, federal authorities from the USA Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York, and the Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace have been discussing whether or not to cost Bickford federally or below state regulation or each in relation to the assault, the sources stated.
The suspect has not been charged, and it’s unclear whether or not he has an legal professional. The US Lawyer’s workplace declined to remark. CNN has reached out to the Manhattan DA’s workplace for remark.
Investigators imagine Bickford arrived Thursday in New York and checked right into a resort on Manhattan’s Decrease East Facet, the sources stated. Then Saturday, he went simply after 10 p.m. to the Instances Sq. checkpoint at West 52nd Avenue and eighth Avenue the place officers would test luggage for weapons or suspicious objects, NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and police stated.
Bickford pulled out a machete, hanging one officer with the blade and one other officer within the head with the deal with earlier than swinging the blade at a 3rd officer, who then shot him within the shoulder, in keeping with the sources and the NYPD.
Investigators on Sunday have been searching for search warrants for the suspect’s telephone and on-line actions to find out if he had been viewing violent extremist propaganda, regulation enforcement sources stated.
The NYPD had despatched a bulletin Friday to regulation enforcement companions throughout the nation titled, “ISIS-Aligned Media Unit Releases Video Forward of New 12 months’s Eve, Demanding Lone Offender Assaults,” in keeping with the sources. The video, being circulated in on-line chat rooms, reveals “chosen video clips, suggesting varied technique of assault, together with explosives, handguns, knives, and toxins,” in keeping with the bulletin, obtained by CNN.
It’s not clear if the checkpoint assault suspect has considered terrorist propaganda. The techniques seem to observe a well-recognized mannequin of prior assaults in opposition to New York Metropolis by lone offenders.
If deemed a terrorist assault, it might be the primary by a suspected terrorist on the occasion in Instances Sq., one of many world’s most watched New 12 months’s Eve celebrations.
Bickford is from Wells, Maine, in keeping with sources, a seashore city with a inhabitants of simply over 11,000 individuals.
Correction: An earlier model of this story incorrectly said when the NYPD despatched a bulletin a few video launched by ISIS-aligned media. It was Friday.