Australian Teenager’s Attack on Police Worker Called Act of Terrorism

[Jesus Malverde]

Source: NY Times

15-year-old boy fatally shot a civilian police employee in a Sydney suburb on Friday and was killed by responding officers, the New South Wales police commissioner said, describing the boy’s act as terrorism.

The teenager, who was of Iraqi-Kurdish descent and was born in Iran, killed Curtis Cheng, a 17-year employee of the New South Wales Police Force who worked in the finance department, Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said at a news conference on Saturday.

The shooting took place just after 4:30 p.m. on Friday outside Police Headquarters in Parramatta, a western Sydney suburb, as Mr. Cheng left work. Police officers responding to the shooting said the teenager fired shots. The officers then shot and killed him. The police have not yet made his name public.

“We are a long way from establishing a full picture of this man, his exact motivations still remain a mystery to us,” Mr. Scipione said at the news conference, held with the state’s premier, Mike Baird. “We believe his actions were politically motivated and therefore linked to terrorism.”

Mr. Scipione said the boy had no criminal record. “We have no information that this individual posed this type of threat,” he said, adding the teenager was not under police surveillance.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/asia/australian-teenagers-attack-on-police-worker-called-act-of-terrorism.html

[Turborama]

1. Just to clarify, Cheng was 58 and had worked for the NSW police for 17 years

At first glance I thought the NYT were saying he was 17.


http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/parramatta-shooting-curtis-cheng-was-on-his-way-home-when-shot-dead-20151003-gk0ibk.html

[Ichigo Kurosaki]

2. Gee,

and some here were praising Australia's gun laws....
A 15 year old got his hands on one and used it.
In Dec 2014 an armed man had held employees and customers at a cafe for more than 16 hours.
The captor and two hostages died during the confrontation and four other people were wounded.

There are other cases if you actually go looking for them.

[Chakab]

3. Oh for fuck's sake. Nobody said that gun control will prevent all gun violence.

Look at the rate of gun violence in Australia before the Port Arthur massacre and after the government enacted its buyback and gun control policies. There was a marked decrease.

The notion that gun control shouldn't be pursued because you can't guarantee that nobody will ever be able to perpetrate a criminal act with a gun once said laws are in place is child-like reasoning.

[Skittles]

4. LOL

great analytic thinking skills there

[bemildred]

5. The point is that you have to go looking for them.

They are not plastered all over the front page in big type because the list of the dead runs to dozens every 4 weeks or so.