A Sri Lankan man picked up a knife from a display in Countdown LynnMall inside the LynnMall Shopping Centre in New Lynn, Auckland, New Zealand and used it to stab at least six shoppers shortly after 2:00 p.m. on September 3, 2021. Within a minute of the start of the attack, he was fatally shot by police.

Suppression orders prevented officials from releasing certain information about the man because he had faced court in the past. But here are eight things revealed about him:

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  1. He was a supporter of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) ideology.
  2. Originally from Sri Lanka, he came to New Zealand in 2011 on a student visa.
  3. In October 2016, he first came to the attention of New Zealand police after he took to social media to post comments advocating violent extremism. He was placed on a terror watchlist.
  4. In 2017, he told a person at a mosque in Auckland that he wanted to go to Syria to fight for ISIS and was later arrested at an airport in Auckland. He was charged with possessing restricted publications and a hunting knife, which were found in his apartment. He pleaded guilty and was released on bail.
  5. In 2018, he was arrested for buying a knife while on bail. Authorities found objectionable or extremist materials at his home that included ISIS videos of extreme violence. He admitted charges of distributing material and the offensive weapon charge was dropped.
  6. The Crown accused him of planning a knife attack after buying a knife in 2018 and sought to have him charged under the Terror Suppression Act but according to his then lawyer Belinda Sellars QC, planning an attack did not meet the required threshold of the law. After reviewing the legislation and what it allowed, Justice Mathew Downs declined the application in a judgment released in July 2020.
  7. In July 2021, he was released from prison and was sentenced to 12 months of supervision with special conditions for possessing objectionable materials and failing to assist the police in exercising search powers.
  8. He died at the age of 32.

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