Willetton Bunnings stabbing: 16-year-old boy had been in deradicalisation program for two years

The boy shot dead outside a Perth Bunnings store had been in a deradicalisation program since the age of 14, an effort aimed at preventing precisely the sort of incident that played out.

WA Police shot and killed a 16-year-old in the carpark of Willetton Bunnings.

Two years of painstaking effort to try to deradicalise a Perth teenager came horrifically unwound in the space of just minutes.

The 16-year-old boy shot to death in the carpark outside a Willetton Bunnings on Saturday night had since the age of 14 been one of several juveniles in a program aimed at helping those who have been radicalised online. That support program had drawn on West Australian police, psychologists, the Department of Education, and faith leaders in an effort to prevent precisely the sort of incident that played out over those frantic few minutes.

It was just after 10pm when police received a 000 call from the boy. According to police commissioner Col Blanch, the boy made it clear “he was going to commit acts of violence”. He provided neither a name nor a location before hanging up.

The scene after police shot dead a teenager who stabbed a member of the public. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Philip Gostelow

Minutes later, another 000 call came through, this time a member of the public reporting a male with a large knife running through a car park in Willetton, a suburb in Perth’s south known for its multicultural population.

It took three minutes for three police officers to arrive at the scene. There, they were confronted by a caucasian male carrying a 30cm-long kitchen knife. When challenged to put the weapon down, he instead advanced on the officers.

Two of them deployed their Tasers but these did little to slow him. As he continued to advance, the third officer fired a single shot. It proved fatal.

At 11pm, less than an hour after that first 000 call, the boy was pronounced dead.

Unknown to the officers at the scene at the time of the shooting, a man in his 30s was lying nearby in the carpark, having been stabbed in the back by the boy before police arrived.

He is in a serious but stable condition in Royal Perth Hospital.

WA Police at the scene of a stabbing near the Willetton Bunnings. Picture: 7News

Commissioner Blanch said he had already reviewed the body-worn camera footage captured by the three officers and backed in their handling of the incident. “I am comfortable with the police’s professional approach within training,” he said. “They have done their job.

“And I know that that police officer and his extended colleagues are hurting this morning as a result of the outcome, but they have done their job.”

At the same time as the drama was playing out, multiple people across Perth’s Muslim community were making 000 calls of their own.

Several people had received messages from the teenager that were unsettling enough to prompt them to call the authorities.

The shooting itself will, as with all such incidents, be subject to an independent investigation by WA’s Corruption and Crime Commission and WA Police’s internal affairs unit.

Understanding the chain of events of Saturday night is likely to be less complex than unravelling how a Perth teenager came to be radicalised in the first place.