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#Alleged Times Square cop slasher officially charged, as belongings found in NYC park

“Alleged Times Square cop slasher officially charged, as belongings found in NYC park”

The Maine teenager and alleged recently radicalized Islamic extremist suspected of attacking cops with a machete on New Year’s Eve was officially charged — as police found belongings tied to him in a Queens park on Monday, according to sources.

Trevor Bickford, 19, was hit with state charges — two counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault — over the Dec. 31 attack near Times Square that left three police officers injured.

It came after cops responded to reports of suspicious packages in Forrest Park just after midnight, and discovered a sleeping bag, bedroll and various food items purportedly belonging to the suspect, police sources told The Post.

Bickford, of Wells, Maine, traveled to New York on an Amtrak train — arriving on Dec. 29 — and appeared to have been a lone wolf, sources have said.

While it appears he may have slept in Forrest Park, sources believe the alleged attacker spent the night of Dec. 30 at a hotel on the Bowery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Trevor Bickford on a stretcher
Trevor Bickford, 19, on a stretcher after the alleged police attacker was shot by an officer on New Year’s Eve in Midtown Manhattan.
Paul Martinka

He had also apparently made a donation to the Bowery Mission to satisfy the Muslim tenet of “good deeds,” based on a receipt that was found on him when he was taken into custody, sources said Monday.

Investigators believe Bickford spent “several hours” in Times Square on New Year’s Eve before the attack but did not visit any sensitive landmarks, according to sources. He had not used a credit card in New York and appeared to be funding his trip in cash, the sources said.

Bickford was shot in the shoulder by a cop during the attack and has been hospitalized at Bellevue since.

Police car in Forest Park
Police discovered various items allegedly belonging to Bickford in Forrest Park.
Gregory P. Mango

The machete-wielding madman allegedly approached Officers Louis Iorio and Paul Cozzolino at West 52nd Street and Eighth Avenue — near a post where cops were screening revelers for weapons — around 9:30 p.m. and slashed them with the 18-inch weapon. 

Cozzolino — a rookie who just graduated from the Police Academy on Friday — suffered a fractured skull and Iorio, an eight-year veteran who is stationed in Staten Island, was gashed in the head. Both were released from the hospital Sunday.

A third officer, Michael Hanna, also a rookie, shot Bickford after he and the other cops were attacked, sources said. Hanna, who joined the force in April, was treated at Mount Sinai West and he too has been released. 

Smiling photo of Bickford
Bickford, a Wells, Maine, resident, had been radicalized in Islamic extremism as recently as a month ago, according to law enforcement sources.
Facebook/Audra D’Antilio Simpson
NYPD Officer Louis Lorio is seen in a Facebook photo.
NYPD Officer Louis Iorio in a Facebook photo. Iorio was one of three cops injured in a New Year’s Eve machete attack, allegedly by an Islamist extremist.
Facebook

Sources said the suspect had told his family that he was traveling to the city for tourism purposes.

He was carrying a diary calling on his family members to “repent to Allah and accept Islam” at the time of the attack, as well as a last will and testament, sources have said.

Police were investigating how the New England resident would have come to sleep in a non-famous park located in the middle of an outer borough, sources said.

Bickford had already been on the FBI’s terrorism watch list after his mother and other aunt had reported the newly radicalized man — who allegedly had an interest in traveling to Afghanistan and other locations overseas — to the feds, sources said.

Sources said the alleged attacker may have been looking for a foreign extremist group that was aligned with his radicalized beliefs to join.

Prior to becoming radicalized about a month ago, according to sources, the teen was a state champion wrestler who was also once recognized in a scholastic art contest, local reports said.

The FBI raided Bickford’s Maine home Sunday night. It was unclear whether he would also be facing terror-related federal charges.

Additional reporting by Haley Brown

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