CNN
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The diary, which investigators believe belongs to the suspect in the attack on three police officers outside Times Square on New Year’s Eve, ends with a final will and testament.
Multiple law enforcement sources said the last entry, dated Dec. 31, began with “This could be my last entry,” explaining how the author’s belongings were divided among family members. I have left instructions as to what to do and instructions for burial. According to a source familiar with the contents of the diary.
Even before the attack, Trevor Bickford was on the FBI’s radar.
Bickford, 19, who the New York City Police Department is detaining as a suspect in a machete attack on a police officer, was questioned by FBI agents in Maine in mid-December. According to multiple law enforcement sources, he was willing to die for his religion.
Bickford’s mother and grandmother became increasingly concerned about his desire to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and reported him to the Wells, Maine Police Department on December 10.
Sources say that when the FBI launched a broader investigation, they also put him on the terrorist watch list. The Taliban is not a designated foreign terrorist organization, so his plan to travel to Afghanistan to join the group does not constitute a federal crime of “attempting to materially support a terrorist group.”
Multiple law enforcement sources told CNN Bickford traveled to New York via Amtrak, so those trips would not have tripped the watch list’s database.
His original destination was Miami, but he stopped in New York and checked into the Grand Hotel near Manhattan’s Bowery on December 29. After checking out with all his luggage on New Year’s Eve, he headed to Times Square. attack, sources said.
The suspect has not been charged and it is unclear whether he has an attorney. The federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment. CNN reached out to the Manhattan DA office for comment.
Shortly after 10 p.m., he went to a Times Square checkpoint on West 52nd Street and Eighth Avenue, where officers checked his bags for weapons and suspicious items, NYPD Police Commissioner Keecchant Sewell and police said. Stated.
Sources and the NYPD said Bickford pulled out a machete and struck one officer with a knife and another over the head with a hilt before swinging the blade at a third officer, who killed him. shot in the shoulder.
Sources said the diary expressed his desire to join the Taliban and was in a bag he threw away before carrying out the attack.
Bickford remains in custody at Bellevue Hospital, where he is being treated for a gunshot wound to his shoulder sustained during the attack, sources said.
Three police officers injured at one of New York’s most high-profile events come a day after officials warned that a video “allied with ISIS” called for “lone criminal attacks” However, they were all treated and released. York Police Department.
On Sunday, federal officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office were discussing whether to indict Bickford under federal or state law, or both, in connection with the attack, sources said. .
