Alleged Islamic extremist who attacked NYPD cops with machete was on FBI watchlist: sources

The alleged Islamic extremist who attacked three NYPD cops with a machete near the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square is a 19-year-old man from Maine who recently became radicalized — and was already on an FBI watchlist, law-enforcement sources told The Post Sunday.

Suspect Trevor 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 said.

He allegedly told the feds after his arrest that he hatched the violent plan as recently as Friday, and made statements that he wanted to attack a uniformed officer or someone armed because they are the “enemy of the state,” according to the sources.

Sources said teen became “radicalized” as recently as a month ago.

Bickford’s mother and aunt had notified authorities because he apparently made statements indicating a desire to go fight in Afghanistan alongside Islamic militants, landing him on the FBI’s terrorism “Guardian Watchlist,” according to the sources.

Investigators were said to be looking at Bickford’s Internet history, including his phone and computer.

The suspected cop-hater carried a diary and a handwritten manifesto in his backpack in which he urged his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam,” according to sources.

He was staying at a hotel in the Bowery in lower Manhattan —packing camping gear, a diary and a last will and testament — before heading to Midtown where he walked up to the cops without notice and began swinging the weapon, a type of machete known as a Gurkha, according to sources.

Two officers working the holiday detail in Times Square were struck in the head with what Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described as “a large knife” around 10 p.m. on Eighth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street.

The cops who were attacked were outside the security screening zone, Sewell said in a briefing early Sunday.

The NYPD released a photo of the blade that showed it was 18 inches long.

Officer Louis Iorio, who is stationed in Staten Island, suffered a gash to the head, the sources said.

The other wounded officer, a rookie who is assigned to the Police Academy, was identified by sources as Paul Cozzolino. He suffered a fractured skull. They were both taken to Bellevue Hospital.

A third officer, Michael Hanna, also a rookie, shot Bickford in the shoulder after he and the other cops were attacked, the sources said.

Hanna, who joined the force in April, was also injured and taken to Mount Sinai West.

All three officers were expected to recover.

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Charges were pending against Bickford on Sunday. He remained hospitalized at Bellevue, cops said.

A preliminary search by investigators turned up no criminal record for Bickford, police sources said. 

But sources said the FBI in Boston has an open case on him and he was on the so-called guardian list because of his radicalization.

“It just goes to show you that the cops are targets, not only in New York but everywhere else,” retired NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone told The Post Sunday.

“Things he posted online probably put him on the radar [with the FBI],” said Giacalone, who is now an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “But like everything else, it’s just missing those one or two pieces for them to be able to act on it. We’ve seen it time and time again.”

Published reports reveal that Bickford appeared to be a typical American teenager before he apparently “found religion” in the wake of his father’s overdose death in 2018, according to sources.

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According to the elder Bickford’s obituary, Trevor’s parents were married on Sept. 9, 2001, and his dad devoted time to coaching the couple’s three sons.

“Although his style of coaching his boys could be hard at times, he loved his boys more than anything,” the obit said. 

According to the Portland Press Herald, Trevor made the honor roll as a freshman at Wells High School and was a member of the championship Wells High School Warriors football team.

In 2020, he was among the students earning awards in art, in Bickford’s case for his work in jewelry, The Portsmouth Herald reported at the time.

Last summer, his mother posted a birthday shout-out for him on Facebook. 

“Happy 19th Birthday Trevor,” mom Audra Simpson wrote on July 28. “So proud and lucky to be able to call you my son.

“Your soul an old soul and you amaze me every day with all that you enjoy to explore and do,” she wrote. “I love that you have no fear of trying new things, and you truly are the best brother ever. I am so beyond proud of the man you are becoming. I love you.”