Australian Police shoot and kill armed teenager after knife attack in Perth

() –An armed teenager was shot dead by Australian police after he attacked a man in a Perth suburb on Saturday night, according to Western Australia Premier Roger Cook.

The teen, described as a 16-year-old Caucasian male, was armed with a knife, Cook said during a news conference Sunday.

WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said local police received a call this Saturday night around 10:10 from a man indicating that he was “going to commit acts of violence.”

Blanch said police received another call from a person minutes later indicating that a man with a knife was running. Police responded immediately to that call, Blanch said, and three officers were dispatched.

When officers arrived at the scene, they were confronted by the teen, who was alone and holding a “large kitchen knife.”

The officers challenged him to put down the knife, which he refused, instead of rushing to the police. Two Tasers were deployed and when they failed to subdue him, the third officer “fired a single shot and fatally wounded the man,” Blanch said.

Police discovered after the shooting that the teenager had stabbed and wounded a middle-aged man before his confrontation with police.

The victim is currently in the hospital in serious but stable condition with a wound to his back, Blanch said.

Police knew the teen before the incident, Blanch said, as he “was part of a program on online radicalization over the past few years.”

“We are dealing with complex issues with this 16-year-old, both mental health issues and online radicalization issues,” Blanch said.

The program focused on covering violent extremism for those exhibiting concerning behavior, Blanch said.

Blanch said police received multiple calls before and after the incident from members of WA’s Muslim community who had concerns about the individual.

“I want to thank the members of the Muslim community who did that because it allowed us to quickly identify who this individual was and respond as quickly as we did,” Blanch said.

In a statement released Sunday about the incident, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “We are a peace-loving nation and there is no place for violent extremism in Australia.”