A teenager who allegedly stabbed a Sydney University student in the neck with a kitchen knife while dressed in camouflage was known to police and other government agencies and had been in a deradicalisation program.
The 14-year-old allegedly stabbed a 22-year-old stranger on the ground of the university at about 8.30 on Tuesday morning, and was later arrested after allegedly fleeing on a bus and presenting to hospital suffering from cuts to his hand, believed to have been inflicted during the alleged attack.
The student was treated at the scene for his injuries before being taking to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in a serious but stable condition.
NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Walton from the Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics Command said on Tuesday afternoon that the boy was known to police and other government agencies, but that because a motive and ideology were yet to be determined, the incident had not been declared a terror attack.
The boy had no known links to the military or cadets, and there is no evidence he was working with a network.
According to The Daily Telegraph, the boy had been put in a deradicalisation program after having previous charges dismissed on mental health grounds in February.
He had been charged with using carriage service to menace, harass or offend and stalking or intimidating with intent to cause fear of physical harm after allegedly making violent threats to classmates at a school in Sydney’s inner-west in September last year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Assistant Commissioner Walton said: “This young person’s activity is unknown, but I would say that it’s likely to be categorised as mixed and unclear ideology. It’s certainly not a religiously-related ideology.
“It is known as a salad bar of ideologies. A lot of these vulnerable people, they’re not linked into one particular ideology.”
The incident comes less than a week after a Liberal party supporter, 19, was charged with a terror offence over an alleged attempted attack on a Labor MP in Newcastle.
And in May police shot dead a Muslim teenager who stabbed a man in the back outside a Bunnings in Willetton, Perth. The 16-year-old had also been part of a government deradicalisation program aimed at countering violent extremism.
