World Courant
Trevor Bickford was sentenced Thursday to 27 years in jail for a “brutal” knife assault on New Yr’s Eve 2022 in Instances Sq. that significantly injured three New York Metropolis Police Division officers, the Justice Division mentioned.
Bickford, who was 19 on the time of the assault, got here from Maine in December 2022 with the intention of finishing up a jihadist assault on uniformed officers with a “machete-style knife,” prosecutors mentioned.
He pleaded responsible in January to 6 federal fees stemming from the assault: three counts of tried homicide of presidency officers and three counts of assault on authorities officers.
Along with the jail time period, Bickford, now 20, was sentenced to life on supervised launch.
“Right now’s verdict holds Trevor Bickford accountable for his premeditated terrorist assault on Instances Sq. in 2022, during which he tried to kill three NYPD officers in an act of violence,” U.S. Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland mentioned in a press release. rack. “The Division of Justice is deeply grateful to the NYPD for its swift motion and braveness in disrupting this New Yr’s Eve assault, and for the work it does every single day to maintain New Yorkers secure. The Division of Justice will at all times adhere to its state and native legal guidelines. enforcement companions as we work collectively to counter the specter of terrorism, and that features being ruthless in prosecuting those that try and hurt officers.”
Bickford confronted a most sentence of 120 years in jail, twenty years per cost.
The federal government sought a jail sentence of at the least 50 years, arguing within the run-up to Thursday’s ruling that it’s “essential and acceptable to replicate the extraordinarily critical nature of the suspect’s terrorist offense, to supply a simply punishment for the suspect’s habits. , to discourage the suspect from resuming actions in help of radical terrorist ideology, and to discourage others who, just like the suspect, may try to hold out brutal terrorist assaults on U.S. soil.
Prosecutors mentioned Bickford’s “brazen actions” had long-lasting penalties for the three officers, who they mentioned felt a life sentence was acceptable.
The protection, in the meantime, requested for a 10-year jail sentence, adopted by 15 years of supervised launch. In a pre-sentencing court docket submitting, they cited his youth on the time of the assault as a serious mitigating issue and argued that his crimes had been “impressed by an unhealthy obsession with Islam” that stemmed from an untreated psychological sickness.
“Mr. Bickford apologizes deeply to the officers, their households and the witnesses that night,” his attorneys wrote. “He acknowledges the ache and struggling he has induced and would do something to undo what he has performed. Whereas Mr. Bickford is aware of he can’t change what occurred up to now, he is aware of he can change his future for the higher and he has labored exhausting to take action beneath difficult circumstances on the (Metropolitan Detention Heart).”
This undated picture reveals Trevor Bickford, who has been charged with tried homicide for attacking New York Metropolis cops close to Instances Sq. on New Yr’s Eve.
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The three NYPD officers had been manning a checkpoint on the sting of Instances Sq. on December 31, 2022, after they had been stabbed with an 18-inch kukri knife. The assault happened close to West 52nd Road and Eighth Avenue, outdoors the safe space arrange for New Yr’s Eve celebrations.
Bickford was shot by one of many wounded officers and arrested after the assault. Regulation enforcement officers discovered Bickford’s backpack close to the scene of the assault, prosecutors mentioned. A e book within the backpack had a passage marked: “Battle within the title of Allah and in the reason for Allah. Battle those that don’t imagine in Allah. Wage a holy conflict,” prosecutors mentioned.
Bickford reportedly instructed investigators that the assault was unsuccessful as a result of not one of the officers died and since he didn’t obtain martyrdom, in keeping with the grievance from the Southern District of New York.
Prosecutors mentioned Bickford deliberate the assault on Instances Sq. after “months of radicalization” and initially deliberate to journey overseas to help the Taliban earlier than specializing in an assault within the US.
Bickford additionally faces greater than a dozen state fees in reference to the New Yr’s Eve assault, together with three counts of tried first-degree homicide in furtherance of an act of terror. He’ll seem in court docket on Might 22 within the state case.
