A radicalised teenager shot dead by police in a Perth car park at the weekend after he had stabbed a man had been suspended from school one week earlier over an assault on another student.
Speaking on ABC Perth radio, the WA education department’s director general, Lisa Rogers, confirmed the 16-year-old school student was excluded from Rossmoyne Senior high school for several days.
“In this instance … he offended and well, he was suspended,” she said.
“The school acted absolutely appropriately. Any offence on [a] school site like that, we would expect a boy or a student to be disciplined.”
Rogers would not detail the nature of the offending, other than to say it was physical.
But she also confirmed the student had been referred to the Australian federal police two years ago after he set off a small improvised explosive in a school toilet.
“Around this time the school noticed unusual behaviour in regards to this boy,” she said.
“It was the school that referred the boy to the federal police.”
The child was charged and given a juvenile caution, and also enrolled into a countering violent extremism (CVE) program.
It is understood the boy, a white convert to Islam, had been self-radicalised by watching extremist content online. Islamic leaders in Perth say he was not a regular at any mosque. The teenager was also understood to have suffered significant mental health issues over a number of years.
The teenager had been participating in the de-radicalisation program for two years, part of which involved him being restricted to a basic mobile telephone without any internet connection. However, in the wake of his death, students at his school reported having seen him watching extremist Islamist context in class on files kept on a USB.
However, Rogers said she had “absolutely no report” that the teenager had extremist material at school, or that – as has been alleged by some Rossmoyne Senior high parents – the boy had used a school prayer space to spread extremist ideology and indoctrinate other students.
“Those classes are supervised, he was closely monitored and supervised. What he did outside of the school gate, in regards to what he did with that content, I can’t speak to. But I can tell you and I can assure parents that whilst that boy was at school, he was monitored.”
On Saturday night, the 16-year-old called 000 to tell police he was going to commit “acts of violence”. He also sent messages to friends that he was “a soldier of the mujahideen … in the path of jihad” and asking forgiveness for “any time I have wronged you”. Some of those people contacted police, concerned at what he might do.
Police then received reports of a man “running around a car park” carrying a large knife. Three officers confronted the teenager in the car park of Bunnings in Willetton in Perth’s southern suburbs.
After Tasers failed to subdue the teenager and he continued to advance towards police, one officer fired a single shot from their firearm, killing him.
It was only after the teenager was killed, that a man in his 30s was found in the car park, having been stabbed in the back by the teen. He was taken to hospital in a serious condition.
In the wake of the teenager’s death, it has also been reported that, in his phone call to police, he made explicit reference to the Australian government’s support for Israel in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
The WA premier, Roger Cook, said “a range of geopolitical issues around the globe had heightened people’s sense of anxiety”.
“I can understand that raises people’s anxieties and awareness.
“That’s why we work so closely with the multifaith community and the multicultural community to reassure them … [and] to make sure that Western Australia remains one of the safest places.”
