A 19-year-old American who attacked police officers with a machete on New Year’s Eve in New York City has been charged at the federal level, including with attempted murder of state agents, a federal prosecutor announced on Tuesday (January 10th). .
The radicalized young man, Trevor Bickford, who wanted to carry out a jihadist attack that evening is accused of attacking three officers on New Year’s Eve near Times Square, where New Yorkers and tourists from around the world gather thousands on the evening of December 31. According to a police complaint, Trevor Bickford had struck several blows and caused injuries to the head and shoulders of the officers, without endangering their lives, before being immobilized.
“I wanted to kill an officer in uniform”
In the statement announcing the indictment of Trevor Bickford, Manhattan federal prosecutor Damian Williams cites his “attempts to wage jihad through the murder of agents of the American state”. “We are deeply grateful for the bravery of the officers injured in this horrific attack”, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the same statement. During an initial interrogation Trevor Bickford said “essentially”: “I wanted to kill an officer in uniform (…) I shouted Allah Akbar”according to the police complaint.
Originally from the state of Maine, in the northeastern United States, the young man had shown signs of Islamist radicalization before the events and carried a diary in which he wrote that his brother, a soldier in the U.S. Army, had “join the ranks of the enemyaccording to the statement from the office of the prosecutor Damian Williams. “He explained that at first he wanted to travel abroad, but then he decided to come to New York first to kill and carry out jihad”had assured the prosecutor Lucy Nicholas during a hearing of appearance in a court of the State of New York, in Manhattan.