A man in Australia fatally stabbed himself after a string of violent incidents including theft of two vehicles, several collisions, and a deadly knife attack.
The unnamed 24-year-old, described as having a “mental health background” by police, was driving a 4WD with no number plates in western Sydney when police pulled him over, news.com.au reports.
This prompted him to ram a police car and make his escape, abandoning his own vehicle and stealing a supermarket lorry once he had fled the scene.
He smashed into as many as five vehicles in the south-west of the iconic city, then hit several more in the suburb of Rockdale before bailing out of the lorry and trying to break into cars which were on the road.
He fatally stabbed a “good Samaritan” who had saw the disturbance and tried to intervene, before car-jacked a taxi and again driving away.
Later, he turned the knife on himself near St Francis Xavier’s Catholic Primary School in Arncliffe.
“[The attacker] has a mental health background. He has not got an extensive criminal history, but he is known to police,” said Acting Assistant Commissioner Mick Fitzgerald.
“It was a man doing everything he could to avoid arrest. His actions, particularly when he stabbed an innocent person, are the actions of someone we believe who had mental health issues,” he added — before offering a curious defence of sorts for the killer.
“It would appear to us that the offender wasn’t trying to intentionally harm people along the way. He could have, if he wished to, harm a great deal of [people],” the police leader suggested.
He said that the man the killer fatally stabbed was “attempting to stop the offender from leaving the scene”.
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