A man drove his SUV into a Melbourne intersection packed with Christmas shoppers yesterday afternoon, deliberately mowing down 19 people – but was it a terror attack?
Although the harrowing incident is undeniably similar to terror attacks in Nice and Barcelona, police don’t think Saeed Noori has links to terrorist organisations.
He has mental health issues and history of drug abuse
The 32-year-old missed an appointment which was a crucial part of his mental health plan on the day of the attack, police say.
“He is on a mental health plan and he was due for an appointment yesterday, which he missed,” Mr Patton said in an interview on Channel 9’s Today.
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“During that preliminary interview with investigators who are looking at this matter, he spoke about dreams, he spoke about voices, but he also did attribute some of his actions to the poor treatment of Muslims.”
Noori also reportedly had a history of drug abuse and came to police attention in 2010 for a “minor assault”, but wasn’t known to counter terrorism forces.
People were “flying everywhere”
The driver was travelling at considerable speeds, one witness estimating it to be between 60 – 100km/hr, and the result was devastating.
One woman who saw the attack unfold said she heard screams before she saw anything.
“We could hear this noise, as we looked left, we saw this white car, it just mowed everybody down,” she said.
“People are flying everywhere. We heard thump, thump. People are running everywhere.”
A bakery owner told the ABC the only thing slowing Noori down was the amount of people he hit.
“He came to rest just next to the tram stop — maybe the side of the tram stop stopped him — but the only thing that seemed to be slowing him down was the amount of pedestrians he had hit.”
Nineteen people were hospitalised after the attack, four of which are in a critical condition. A four-year-old boy and a man in his 80s are two of the victims.
