Trevor Bickford enters a subway station in New York City on Dec. 31, 2022, hours before police say he attacked officers in Times Square. Surveillance image from court documents.
A 20-year-old man accused of attacking New York City police on New Year’s Eve is scheduled for a federal trial in March.
Trevor Bickford was indicted in February on four counts of attempted murder of an officer and three counts of assault on an officer, according to U.S. District Court records. He is scheduled to begin a trial in U.S. District Court on March 18, 2024. He remains in custody.
Bickford also faces 18 charges in state court, which the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said were still active on Thursday. He is scheduled to appear at a hearing on the state charges on Sept. 27, but a spokesperson declined to share the nature of that hearing.
A message left Thursday with the media department for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York asking to speak with prosecutors about the case was not returned.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Bickford is “an adherent of violent Islamic extremism” who “devoted himself to the mission of waging jihad against the U.S. government,” according to the indictment. He’s accused of bringing a machete to Times Square during New Year’s Eve festivities, “for the purpose of using that knife to kill military-aged men working for the U.S. Government.”
Bickford’s federal defenders, Jennifer Brown and Marisa Cabrera, did not respond to a call and email seeking to discuss the case but called the allegations “inflated” in a July 14 motion to dismiss the case.
Bickford’s attorney said he was admitted to the emergency psychiatric department of a Maine hospital less than a month before the attack. His mother believed he was struggling with “severe mental illness,” the motion states – he was erratic, irrational, and recently obsessed with Islam. His mother believed Bickford could be dealing with psychosis or mania.
The hospital didn’t agree Bickford was a danger to himself or others and he was released. Weeks later, he took an Amtrak train to New York, where he stayed at a local hotel on the Lower East Side for a few days.
Bickford then allegedly traveled to Times Square and attacked three officers with the machete.
During an interview with police after the attack, Bickford said he “intended to target all military-aged men,” his attorney wrote in court records. After he received medical treatment for a gunshot wound to the shoulder, Bickford was sent to a psychiatric hospital in New York.
There, Bickford was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and prescribed various antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, the motion states. He was there for a month until federal prosecutors charged him. Were it not for that, the motion states, he would still be at the psychiatric hospital.
Bickford’s attorney wrote that the seven charges, stemming from a “single incident” against three officers, “challenges the principles of fairness.” They said it also violates the Double Jeopardy Clause of the U.S. Constitution by charging Bickford with the same act of murder more than once.
Federal prosecutors have argued that the charges don’t violate Bickford’s constitutional rights, because each charge was for a different victim.
The judge overseeing Bickford’s federal case has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss, according to court records.
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