Police: Man spread terror propaganda before officer attack

PHOENIX (AP) — An 18-year-old Islamic State follower who was shot after throwing rocks at and wielding a knife toward a police officer in metro Phoenix earlier this year had used text messages to spread terror propaganda to a friend, according to documents released by authorities.

Ismail Hamed sent a friend links to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's declaration of jihad, a video of U.S.-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and texted a photo of the gunman in the 2016 Florida nightclub massacre with a message saying, "Never forget Orlando."

In other texts, he alluded to the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, bemoaned the effect of Western secularism on Islam and said he had read accounts of prisoners jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, according to records from the investigation released on June 14 at the request of prosecutors.

Investigators say Hamed was gradually embracing extremist ideologies in the four months before the Jan. 7 attack outside a sheriff's substation in Fountain Hills, which is 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix.

Three weeks before the attack, Hamed texted a friend that the afterlife was all that mattered and that he didn't need anyone but Allah to survive.

On the day of the attack, Hamed told a 911 operator that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, was armed with rocks and a knife, and wanted to meet face-to-face with an officer. He told the operator that he wanted to protest suffering in the Middle East.

Body-camera video of the encounter shows that when a sheriff's sergeant asked for Hamed's identification, Hamed started throwing rocks at him, leading the officer to pull out his handgun and point it at Hamed, who then drew a knife and walked toward the sergeant.

The officer shot Hamed, who survived his...