"It's kind of hard to believe, I was just shocked, you know?" Three officers assigned to New Years Eve celebrations in New York City's Times Square area were injured by a machete-wielding teenager who expressed militant support for Islam, law enforcement officials said. NEW YORK --The suspect in the New Year's Eve machete attack just outside theTimes Squarecelebration was charged Monday with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault. 0:00. News Ukraine Russia Kharkiv Attack. Large bags and coolers are banned from the area, while barriers are set up to prevent vehicle attacks in the secure area. All Rights Reserved. Steering a person in a different direction early on may mean offering assistance to someone who needs it before that person concludes violence is necessary.". Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? One of the injured officers, an eight-year veteran of the NYPD, suffered a laceration to the head, officials said. Thousands of officers are deployed in the area, including many new recruits to the force. Sources say he was put on the list because his aunt reported he had been radicalized online and expressed a desire to travel overseas and fight with Islamic extremists. Police working New Year's Eve detail in Times Square were wounded by a machete-wielding man who struck multiple officers in the head in what law enforcement are investigating as a possible targeted attack. "It has become increasingly clear that the protocols used by federal and local authorities to assess the risk posed by individuals who exhibit threat-related behaviors is out of date and inconsistent with the current threat facing the nation," said Cohen, now an ABC News contributor. The judge ordered another court hearing for the end of the week. The horrifying episode unfolded at 9:40 a.m . Investigators found some of his belongings in Forest Park Monday morning. Both officers were hospitalized, one with a fractured skull and the other with a bad cut. The concussed officer had just graduated from the police academy Friday, and his first assignment was the New Years Eve detail in Times Square, she said. On Wednesday, after about six hours of deliberation, jurors found Mr. Rojas not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect on one count of murder and 23 assault charges. Times Square machete attack suspect now facing terrorism charges The 19-year-old suspect who allegedly attacked three police officers with a machete at a New Year's Eve celebration near Times. Scholz: "In the event of an attack, we will defend every square centimeter of NATO territory together" Update from March 1, 4:35 p.m.: For Latvia, Germany's help is crucial to Ukraine's survival in the Russian war of aggression. Global; United . Feb 27, 2023. So everybody kind of knows everybody.". All three officers Bickford is accused of attacking were released from the hospital the following morning. All the officers are expected to survive and return home shortly. Islamist terror groups have long promoted knife attacks. Prosecutors said he was culpable, but failed to sway jurors in the 2017 attack that left one dead and injured nearly two dozen. When Mr. Rojas returned to the Bronx, friends said, he seemed paranoid and irritable, expressing scorn for the government and railing against taxes, parking tickets and police stops. Relatives had reportedly contacted law enforcement in recent weeks to report their concerns that he was gravitating toward dangerous Islamist ideologies. Large bags and coolers are banned. The attack happened a little after 10 p.m. about eight blocks from Times Square, just outside the high . Driver in Fatal Times Square Attack Found Not Responsible Because of Mental Illness Richard Rojas, a Navy veteran, spiraled after he was discharged. Neither the FBI nor New York police were on the lookout for any other suspects, officials said. One News Page Home; Editions. Informations sur votre appareil et sur votre connexion Internet, y compris votre adresseIP, Navigation et recherche lors de lutilisation des sites Web et applications Yahoo. He doesnt go to jail, Mr. Elsman said. neighbor Steve Isles said. Mr. Peterson told jurors that even if Mr. Rojas believed he was striking spirits on the Seventh Avenue sidewalk, he must have known that he was also striking real people, since his ability to execute a U-turn and drive beneath scaffolding without crashing into it showed competence and awareness. Federal and local authorities are digging into the background of 19-year-old Trevor Bickford, who allegedly attacked a group of NYPD officers outside a security screening zone in Times Square just after 10 p.m. Saturday, multiple law enforcement sources said. New surveillance video from inside Fiorintina's Pizza on Eighth Avenue captured the chaotic moments. The attack took place on 8th Avenue, which is often packed with thick crowds navigating around the frozen zone or trying to find one of the secure entrances. One round, and they went back to protecting the people of this city," Adams said. Barriers are set up to prevent vehicle attacks in the secure area. His name is in a federal law enforcement database, they said, and he was known to investigators for his social media postings. "Wells is a very small community and you think, you know, 'Did this really just happen here?' Officials expected as many as 1 million people to crowd the area. Police working New Year's Eve detail in Times Square were wounded by a machete-wielding man who struck multiple officers in the head in what law enforcement are investigating as a possible targeted attack. In June 2020 in Brooklyn, Dzenan Camovic stabbed an officer in the neck, stole his gun and used it to fire at responding officers in another jihadist-inspired lone wolf attack. "We believe this was a sole individual at this time, there's nothing to suggest otherwise," said Mike Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the New York FBI Field Office. At approximately 10:10 p.m., at 52nd Street and Eighth Avenue, blocks away from the New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square, BICKFORD attacked three NYPD officers, who were detailed to the joint federal-state law enforcement operation to protect the New Year's Eve celebration. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, which detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others . In Jamaica Queens in 2014, a radicalized man named Zale Thompson attacked three officerswithout warning with a hatchet, nearly killing one of the officers. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. "We believe this was a sole individual. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams) - 2NDW2TY from Alamy's library of . "We're looking for somebody who we can associate with a foreign terrorist group or looking at somebody who meets the threshold of a federal terrorism investigation. His trial, which took place over several weeks, centered on his mental condition at the time of the incident. One News Page. Witnesses said the driver, Richard Rojas, tried to flee but was quickly apprehended. They went to the courts, they invoked the red flag law. The bomb never went off, and Faisal. Defense attorneys with The Legal Aid Society requested that he be released on his own recognizance, saying police questioned him for days without a lawyer present and pointing to his lack of criminal history. "The last entry in there says, 'This is likely to be my final entry,' it's dated December 31, 2022," said CNN Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst and former deputy NYPD Commissioner John Miller. On a later call, officials said all three officers had been released from Bellevue Hospital overnight. He may have traveled to New York City specifically to target police, sources told the networks. They planned to search for more evidence at his Maine home. Japan's revised three key national security documents, which now clarify the possession of so-called counterstrike capabilities, are expected to boost the country's . The deranged homeless ex-con accused of randomly shoving a straphanger to her death in a Times Square subway station is due to be arraigned at his hospital bedside Wednesday. The decision in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan was one of only a few recent instances in which a jury found that the illness outweighed evidence of guilt.Its a humane verdict, one of Mr. Rojass lawyers, Enrico De Marco, said as he left the courthouse. The defense asked jurors to find Mr. Rojas not responsible for his actions. A year before he killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis in 2021, Brandon Scott Hole was taken into custody by police and temporarily placed in a mental detention facility for further assessment after his mother complained he assaulted her when she asked what he was going to do with the gun, officials said. An eight-year veteran suffered a head laceration and a recent police academy graduate endured a skull fracture, she said. Experience the home that molds then men and women that protect our nation - West Point Military Academy. He also allegedly said he considered all government officials targets because they couldn't be proper Muslims given the United States government's support of Israel. The New York Police Department released an image of a knife they said had been recovered at the scene of an officer-involved shooting near Times Square on New Year's Eve. "Earlier today, Mr. Bickford was arraigned from Bellevue Hospital after languishing in NYPD custody for nearly four days despite a well-established court requirement that an arraignment take place within 24 hours of arrest," Legal Aid said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Investigators were probing whether he stayed at a homeless shelter downtown, the four officials said. But toxicology tests did not detect the powerful mood-altering drug in Mr. Rojass urine or blood, Mr. Peterson said, suggesting that was another indication that the defendant was aware of what he had done. Multiple law enforcement officials said they were looking into whether the attacker traveled to New York specifically to target police on New Years Eve. "Threat assessment is a systematic, fact-based method of investigation and examination that blends the collection of analysis of multiple sources of information with published research and practitioner experience, focusing on an individual's patterns of thinking and behavior to determine whether, and to what extent, a person of concern is moving toward an attack," the report states. Since 9/11, there have been at least 10 terror-type attacks targeting uniformed officers with knives. I charged another officer but dropped the knife and I tried to get the police officer's gun but couldn't," Bickford allegedly told detectives. The FBI determined Bickford allegedly wanted to fight in Afghanistan and placed him on a federal watch list to prevent him from traveling overseas, Galati said. Neighbors who knew the suspect and his family told NBC Boston said they were surprised by the allegations. Cohen said threats today are very different from ones the nation faced on Sept. 11, 2001. Photos of Ukrainian civilians and servicemen stopped office workers as they returned from lunch in Seoul on Friday. He remains hospitalized. The man, who made pro-jihadist statements from his hospital bed overnight, is believed to have traveled from Wells to lower Manhattan on Thursday mainly via Amtrak, those sources said. ", He added, We thought someone is trying to shoot, you know, as many people as possible. From there, it's believed Bickford slept in a park in Forest Park, Queens. 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