Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Suspect identified in Manhattan vehicle attack, with 8 dead in 'act of terror'

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at least eight people were killed when a vehicle drove onto a bike path in Lower Manhattan Oct. 31. (Reuters)

By Mark Berman, Devlin Barrett and Rachel Siegel October 31 at 6:39

A man deliberately drove into bicyclists and pedestrians in a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing at least eight people and injuring more than one dozen in an act of terrorism, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said Tuesday.

“This is a very painful day in our city,” de Blasio said at a news conference. “Based on the information we had at this moment, this was an act of terror, a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians.”

At the news conference, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that around 3:05 p.m., a man driving a rented Home Depot pickup truck entered the West Side Highway bike path, striking bicyclists and pedestrians as he drove southbound. He collided with a bus, injuring two adults and two children inside.

The man then “exited the vehicle brandishing two handguns,” O’Neill said. A paintball gun and a pellet gun were later recovered at the scene.

A police officer confronted the man and shot him in the abdomen, wounding him, O’Neill said. Police arrested the suspect and said they were not seeking anyone else in the incident.

The suspect is a 29-year-old from Tampa, Sayfullo Saipov, according to two law enforcement officials.

A Home Depot spokesman confirmed that a rental truck from the company was involved and said Home Depot was cooperating with authorities.

President Trump responded to the attack on Twitter, saying it “looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump has been briefed on the incident by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and will be continually updated as more details are known.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected,” Sanders said.

Though the Islamic State — a militant group that regularly claims responsibility for attacks around the world — did not immediately assert responsibility for the New York attack, its supporters celebrated it in online postings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity on the Web.

Greg Ahl was driving south on 12th Avenue when he passed “crushed bikes and bodies all along the bike path.” He said the attacker must have just driven down the path since “nobody had even stepped up to help [the bikers] yet.”

Ahl, of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, estimated seeing 30 crushed bicycles around 3:15 p.m. with “parts everywhere” that “looked like they had been run over.”

He said that a pedestrian told him that a white pickup truck had just driven south through the bicycle lane.

“After I saw more than a dozen crushed bicycles, I realized what it was,” Ahl said.

Officials flooded to the scene after the first reports of the carnage on the West Side of Manhattan, not far from Stuyvesant High School and the World Trade Center site.

De Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) arrived in the area in the late afternoon and were briefed on what happened alongside O’Neill, the police commissioner.

A fire department spokesman said Tuesday that people were “being treated and evaluated at the scene,” which he described as “a pretty lengthy scene.” Police urged people to avoid a stretch of West Street extending more than a mile along the West Side of Manhattan.

Wesley Lowery and Eli Rosenberg contributed to this developing story. First posted: 3:52 p.m.