NEW YORK - The hatchet-wielding man who assaulted four New York police officers in Queens conducted a terrorist attack, according to New York City police.
“This was a terrorist act,” New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said in response to a question on Friday.
John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy counterterrorism chief, said the attacker, Zale Thompson, converted to Islam two years ago and then at some point self-radicalized. He added that Thompson was self-directed in his actions, and he had no affiliations with any particular group.
Thompson, who was 32, unmarried and unemployed, appeared to have acted alone and was not affiliated to a particular group, but that the investigation was ongoing, he said.
A loner who spent hours locked away in his bedroom, he had looked at websites about groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and watched beheadings and Wednesday’s deadly attack in Canada.
Police officer Kenneth Healy, 25, is in hospital in a critical but stable condition after being injured in the back of the head during Thursday’s broad daylight attack in a busy shopping area.
Another officer was hit in the arm in the assault in New York’s borough of Queens. The group of four young police officers had graduated from the police academy only months before.
In an attack that lasted just seven seconds, Bratton said Thompson charged with a hatchet in his hand, striking two officers before he was shot dead by the two other officers, who were uninjured.
A 29-year-old female bystander was accidentally shot and is also in hospital in a critical but stable condition, Bratton said.
An axe and a large hunting knife were recovered from his home and Thompson made anti-Western, anti-government and in some cases anti-white statements on social media, police said.
He visited websites that focused on terror groups such as Al-Qaeda, the IS organization and the Shebab Islamists in Somalia, according to news reports.
Police said Thompson’s Internet browsing history included the fence-jumping incident at the White House this week and Wednesday’s shooting in Canada.
“The investigation is hoping to determine as quickly as possible if there were any other actions that he was engaged in with others that might indicate a continuing a threat,” Bratton said.
Police said they were investigating whether Thompson was affiliated with any mosque or association, but said most of his activity and exposure appears to have been through the Internet.
“The father described that he spent extensive amounts of time by himself in his bedroom and by all accounts was a true proverbial loner,” said Bratton.
Thompson had no police record in New York but had come into contact with the force as a victim of assault when he was 16, and was arrested six times in California in 2003-04.
He spent three years in the military but was involuntarily discharged in 2003, most likely due to drugs, police said.