Australian police have shot and killed a man brandishing a knife after one person was stabbed to death and two more injured in a seemingly random rampage in central Melbourne today.
Witnesses reported seeing a car speeding past and narrowly missing a tram, before crashing outside a department store on Bourke Street at 4.20pm local time, reports ABC News. One bystander said the driver got out of the car and threw “something like a bomb” into the vehicle, which burst into flames.
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Superintendent David Clayton told a news conference that police were called to the scene and were “confronted by a man brandishing a knife and threatening them”.
“At the same time, passers-by were calling out that members of the public had been stabbed,” Clayton said.
“Three people have been stabbed, unfortunately one is deceased at the scene, two other victims are currently in hospital,” he added. Their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Police shot the suspect, who later died in hospital.
Witness Neil McKeller, who works at a bookshop near the attack scene, told reporters: “We heard the explosion, and we heard gunshots later. We heard it but we didn’t know what it was.”
At a press conference, chief commissioner Graham Ashton confirmed that investigators were treating the incident as terror-related.
The Somali-born attacker “had family associations to people known to counterterrorism, and was also himself known to count-terrorism”, The Guardian reports, although his own criminal record was restricted to petty crimes.
Daniel Andrews MP tweeted his thanks to “the Victoria Police officers who responded so bravely, and the everyday Victorians who came to the aid of complete strangers”.
The incident comes two days after the launch of the trial of Melbourne man James Gargasoulas, who is facing 33 charges including six counts of murder over a deadly incident in January 2017, when he allegedly drove a car into pedestrians on Bourke Street. Gargasoulas has pleaded not guilty.
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