NYPD Machete Attack Suspect Charged with Attempted Murder. Officials Share More About Radical Islamic Views

Teen suspect of attacking three New York City police officers with a machete on New Year’s Eve has been charged with attempted murder, police said Monday. 

The 19-year-old suspect from Wells in Maine was accused of attacking three NYPD officers near Times Square at 10:11 pm on Saturday. He attempted to strike one officer and then hit two others with his weapon. According to NBC New York, the suspect was charged with attempted murder and attempted assault. reported. 

After his aunt claimed that the suspect had been radicalized online, and expressed a desire for fighting overseas for Islamic extremists, the FBI placed him on their terror watch list. The suspect allegedly made pro-jihadi comments from his hospital bed, and carried in his backpack writings that included Islamic extremist propaganda. Sources in law enforcement confirmed to NBC that the suspect was interviewed by federal investigators prior to the machete attack. 

Officials claimed that the teenager had also written instructions in his diary regarding where he wanted to be interred and who should receive his belongings. Officials claim that the suspect also wrote that he was sorry to his mom and asked for her brother’s support in his radical Islamic beliefs. 

CBS News reports that authorities are investigating whether the attack was inspired or motivated by radical Islamic extremism. reported. The suspect, a teenage boy, is believed to have traveled by Amtrak from Maine in order to reach New York. Sources told CBS that the NYPD did not know the suspect had been placed on an FBI terror watchlist.

After being shot in his shoulder by one the officers he had assaulted, the suspect was subdued. The suspect was subdued by the NYPD officers after he was shot in the shoulder by one of them. They have since been released. The suspect was also taken by the NYPD to be treated and is expected that he will survive.

A laceration to his head was sustained by an eight-year veteran officer. According to NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell, another officer, who was a graduate of the police academy, sustained a skull fracture as well as laceration.