Times Square
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Trevor Bickford, the 19-year-old suspect accused of attacking New York police officers with a machete near Times Square on New Year’s Eve has been arrested and faces charges of attempted murder of a police officer, CNN reported on Monday.

Police are recommending that Bickford be charged with two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and two counts of attempted assault in the attack, the New York Police Department said.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has said that they do not yet have details of when Bickford will be arraigned. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney.

The formal arrest comes two days after Bickford allegedly attacked police officers at a security screening area outside Times Square, the center of the city’s famed New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Just after 10:00 p.m. he went to the Times Square checkpoint at West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue where officers check bags for weapons or suspicious items, NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and police said.

At the security area, Bickford allegedly pulled out a machete, struck one officer with the blade and another officer in the head with the handle, and then swung the blade at a third officer, who shot Bickford in the shoulder, according to the sources and the NYPD. The officers have been treated and released.

Bickford had been in custody and under police guard at Bellevue Hospital since the incident, according to CNN.

Earlier on Monday, the New York Post reported that Bickford, a radicalized Islamist, wrote a threatening manifesto that ordered his family to “repent to Allah and accept Islam.”

Bickford was interviewed by FBI agents in Maine in mid-December after he said he wanted to travel overseas to help fellow Muslims and was willing to die for his religion, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

Bickford’s mother and grandmother became increasingly concerned about his desire to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban and reported this to the Wells, Maine, police department out of concern for him on December 10, the sources said.

When the FBI opened its wider investigation they also placed him on a terrorist watch list, according to sources. Because the Taliban is not designated a foreign terrorist entity, planning to travel to Afghanistan to join the group does not constitute the federal crime of “attempted material support of a terrorist group.”

Since 2013, American prosecutors have charged hundreds of radicalized individuals, mostly with crimes related to support for the Islamic State (ISIS).

Last June, a citizen of Uzbekistan who is a resident of New York City and was convicted of conspiring to and attempting to provide material support to ISIS was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Dilkhayot Kasimov, 34, was convicted of both counts following a trial in 2019. He was charged in 2015.