Axe attacker Zale Thompson's chilling manifesto
Chilling new details have emerged about Zale Thompson's manifesto, following his brazen axe attack on NYPD police in broad daylight on October 23.
Investigators have put together the 32-year-old's final days before he was shot as the officers defended themselves, with sources revealing he was consumed by jihadi philosophy, according to ABC News.
Thompson had a manifesto on his computer, where he wrote: "Seek them out, watch them and then attack them. Chop off the head of the beast. If we can’t do it ‘there,’ we have to do it here."
Two sources briefed on the case have shed insight on how Thompson was encouraged by an attack on Canada's parliament a day before his attack, and how this fueled his hunger to attack US government and authority figures.
"Detectives had found 277 sites he visited within last nine months that had something to do with al Qaeda, ISIS, beheadings or jihad," said one police source. "He’s been all over the charts."
During the seven-second attack, Thompson hit the two uniform police officers as they were taking photos with members of the public.
A second pair of officers were patrolling nearby.
About five days before the attack, Thompson reportedly locked himself inside a room at his father's house where he read jihadi websites.
On October 21, his father kicked him out of the home, according to police sources.
"The guy was angry at authority, angry at the establishment," one source said. "And so he's in there basically getting hypnotised by the computer. Talk about brainwashing. This guy sat in his room for days at least three days straight, closed the door and just sat in front of his computer."
Investigations are still continuing and NYPD spokesman Steve Davis said detectives are confident that Thompson acted alone without specific direction from a terror leader elsewhere.
But Davis said this proves "lone wolves" can be extremely dangerous.
"The further we get into this we are confident that, if he were directly inspired or directly recruited by a known quantity, that would have come out by know," he said.
"It's pretty clear he was radicalised by himself. But in a way that's more bothersome than the people that are recruited by the real deal because you can’t see these people."
Police ruled out that the people who asked the officers for photos had set up the attack and based on street surveillance, have determined
Thompson 'stalked' the officers.
"There’s video, very distant, about two blocks up, that shows him at the top of the frame," one of the sources said. "He stays there about two minutes. Then, he bends over and then bolts, charges down the street, charging at the cops with the axe. You can see him watching, down the block."
