The man accused of attacking three police officers with a machete near Times Square on New Year’s Eve had traveled to New York from his home in Maine to injure police in an act of Islamist extremism, a senior law enforcement official said Monday .
The man, Trevor Bickford, 19, has been charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault, police announced on Monday. Mr Bickford could also be charged with terrorism, the law enforcement officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday, police said, Mr. Bickford attacked three officers standing at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 52nd Street, just outside the security cordon for the Times Square celebrations, before one of the three officers shot him. in the shoulder. An officer, who had just graduated from the police academy, suffered a skull fracture in the attack and remains in stable condition in hospital, police said.
The other two officers, including the one who shot Mr. Bickford, have been released from the hospital, while Mr. Bickford remains in stable condition at the hospital, the law enforcement official said.
Sometime on the Saturday before the attack, the officer said, Mr Bickford wrote a suicide note to his family in a diary later found with him. In it he wrote to his mother: “I am very afraid that you will not repent to Allah and therefore I have hope in my heart that a part of you believes so that you will be taken out of hellfire.”
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Mr Bickford also referred in his diary to his brother, who is in the US Army, for adopting the enemy’s uniform, the law enforcement official said.
Investigators have begun to piece together a picture of the suspect’s life, the official said. Mr. Bickford is from Wells, half an hour south of Portland, Maine. He was a high school athlete, honor roll student, and award-winning recording artist who seemed to be on a downward spiral after his father died of a drug overdose several years ago. Sometime in the past year and a half, he converted to Islam, often praying in nearby mosques and devouring lectures and videos about the religion. He was angry at the persecution of Muslims abroad, including the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uighurs in China, and decided to go abroad and fight for them.
After his family informed police of his plan to go abroad, he said he intended to travel domestically instead, and in peace. He left Maine in early December with several thousand dollars in cash, a debit or credit card, and the machete. Last Thursday he had arrived in New York by train.
Mr. Bickford spent Friday night at a hotel in Manhattan’s Bowery, stopping at the Bowery Mission and making a large donation in keeping with Islamic teachings of charity. He took the subway to Queens, where police later recovered some of his belongings, including a sleeping bag, bed roll and food, in Forest Park in Richmond Hill. The police are investigating whether he met anyone there.
Mid-afternoon on New Year’s Eve, Mr. Bickford was in Times Square. Wanting to attack only police, not bystanders, he waited until he found officers away from other civilians.