SUSPECT COMMITTED ATTACK ‘IN THE NAME OF ISIS,’ POLICE SAY
Police: Attack suspect ‘did this in the name of ISIS’
The Uzbek immigrant accused of using a truck to mow people down along a bike path, killing eight, “did this in the name of ISIS,” police said Wednesday.
Investigators, meanwhile, were at the hospital bedside of 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, working to extract information about the attack Tuesday near the World Trade Center memorial that also left 12 people injured, a law enforcement official said.
The official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saipov was lucid after surgery for wounds suffered when he was shot by police outside his rented Home Depot pickup truck.
John Miller, deputy police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov left behind notes at the scene, handwritten in Arabic with symbols and words, that essentially said the Islamic State group, or ISIS, “would endure forever.”
“It appears that Mr. Saipov had been planning this for a number of weeks. He did this in the name of ISIS,” Miller said, citing the notes.
In the past few years, the Islamic State has been exhorting followers online to use vehicles or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have seen deadly vehicle attacks in the past year or so.
“He appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before with instructions to its followers on how to carry out such an attack,” Miller said.
Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a New York police investigation but appears to have some links to people who have been investigated.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called Saipov a “depraved coward.”
“He was radicalized domestically,” he said on CNN. “It’s not the first time. It’s a global phenomenon now.”
In a number of recent extremist attacks around the world, the assailants were found to have been inspired but not actually directed by the Islamic State, and in some cases never even made contact with the group.
On the morning after the bloodshed, city leaders vowed New York would be not intimidated, and they commended New Yorkers for going ahead with Halloween festivities on Wednesday night.
They also said Sunday’s New York City Marathon, with 50,000 participants and some two million spectators anticipated, will go on as scheduled.
“We will not be cowed. We will not be thrown off by anything,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
While the mayor said there have been no credible threats of any additional attacks, police announced the deployment of heavy-weapon teams and other steppedup security along the marathon route, in the subways and other sites, and New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill urged people to be vigilant and tell police if they see “something that doesn’t look right.”
In Tuesday’s attack, Saipov hurtled down the bike path, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot in the abdomen after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing air guns and yelling “God is great!” in Arabic, they said.
De Blasio called it “a cowardly act of terror.”
The dead consisted of five people from Argentina, one from Germany, and two Americans, authorities said. Nine people remained hospitalized in serious or critical condition, with injuries that included lost limbs and head, chest and neck wounds.
A roughly two-mile stretch of highway in lower Manhattan was shut down for the investigation. Authorities also converged on a New Jersey apartment building and a van in a parking lot at a New Jersey Home Depot.
President Donald Trump railed against the Islamic State on Twitter and declared “Enough!” and “NOT IN THE U.S.A.!”