The teenage suspect in New Year’s Eve machete attack on three NYPD officers near Times Square has been charged with attempted murder, police said.
Trevor Bickford, a 19-year-old from Wells, Maine, faces two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and two counts of attempted assault for the scary Saturday night incident, the NYPD announced Monday. The charges come after he allegedly swung a large knife at the three different officers he had approached on Eighth Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets just after 10 p.m., during a night when the streets of midtown are always packed with tourists and revelers.
Law enforcement sources said that Bickford had been interviewed by federal investigators over pro-jihadi declarations prior to his alleged machete ambush. The teen was in a federal law enforcement database after a relative alerted law enforcement about the radical pro-jihadist views previously expressed, multiple police officials said. Federal officials interviewed Bickford in December shortly after being alerted, sources added.
Bickford took an Amtrak train to New York City on Thursday, according to law enforcement sources, and senior police officials told NBC New York said that he had stayed at a hotel on the Bowery. NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said the suspect dealt two of the officers blows to the head, giving an 8-year veteran a head laceration and a recent police academy graduate a skull fracture. All three NYPD members were released from the hospital the following morning.
Mayor Eric Adams said that he had spoken to one of the wounded officers. “He understood that his role saved lives of New Yorkers today,” the mayor said at the press conference.
One of the officer attacked was Paul Cozzolino Jr, who just graduated from the police academy on Friday. Longtime neighbors in Ossining, New York, described Cozzolino as a friendly and caring guy.
“He’s a giving person, you see, and I feel like it’s more his nature to give back,” said neighbor Parag Kulkarni. Another neighbor said “we need good cops like Paul. He’s a good kid.”
Bickford was also taken to a Manhattan hospital after being shot in the shoulder by one of the officers involved in the incident, Sewell said. He allegedly made a pro-jihadi statement from his hospital bed. Officials said he had personal writings in his backpack that also included terrorist-related propaganda as well as a pocketknife and approximately $200 in cash.
The suspect wrote in a diary whom he wanted to leave belongs to and where he wanted to be buried, officials said, which suggests he might have expected to die during the attack. He also allegedly wrote about his family, including regrets for disappointing his mom and hopes his brother would join his radical ideology.
“We believe this was a sole individual at this time, there’s nothing to suggest otherwise,” said Mike Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the New York FBI Field Office. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is also investigating.
Investigators planned to search for more evidence at Bickford’s home in Maine.
This incident follows other lone-wolf terror-type attacks on NYPD officers. In 2014, a radicalized man attacked three officers with a hatchet without warning in Queens. And two years ago, a man stabbed a Brooklyn officer in the neck before stealing his gun and using it to fire at responding officers in another jihadist-inspired lone-wolf attack.
Adams commended the work of the officers and the police department’s security planning that went into securing the area around Times Square, planning he said saved lives.
“It is why the commissioner and her team ensures that we properly screen everyone entering the area where the viewing is actually taking place,” Adams said.
The violent attack and gunfire sparked brief chaos amid revelers lined up along 8th Avenue. The New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square were not impacted.
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