Attack victims honored as investigators seek answers
NEW YORK — The eight people killed in a truck driver’s rampage were honored by friends and strangers on Thursday with a nighttime walk down the riverfront esplanade where the victims died as both investigators and terror-weary New Yorkers tried to make sense of the crime.
Some of the marchers carried candles as city lights twinkled on the water. Others pushed bicycles in solitary with the victims, who were cut down on the long bike path that runs the length of Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront.
The mourners included Harry Kassen, a student at the Manhattan school where one of the victims, Nicholas Cleves, 23, worked part-time.
“You never think it is going to be someone you know,” said Kassen, 17. He said he’d just recently worked with Cleves on lighting and sound for a school performance.
“We were up in the tech booth, chatting. Then, two weeks later, here we are. And he’s gone,” Kassen said.
The march began near the spot where authorities say Sayfullo Saipov, 29, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, steered a rented truck onto a
barriers
bike bath and sped south toward the World Trade Center, striking cyclists and pedestrians in his bath. He was shot by a police officer after crashing the truck into a school bus and arraigned on Wednesday on terrorism charges.
Two women carried the flag of Argentina, in remembrance of the five people from that country who were killed when Saipov’s truck plowed into a group of friends who had come to New York together to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation.
The memorial walk and vigil took place hours after several of the Argentine survivors of the attack visited a severely injured and hospitalized member of their group, Martin Marro, of Newton, Massachusetts, to tell him for the first time which of his friends had died.
New York officials on Thursday began to put up temporary concrete barriers at 57 locations where it is possible for vehicles to turn onto the bike path where the attack took place.
In the wake of the attack, US President Donald Trump said he aimed to shut down the “diversity visa” program, which allowed Saipov to come to the United States in 2010. But experts differ on whether the move will make the country safer.
Radio pundit Dana Loesch told Fox News on Thursday that the president is correct in his calls to end the program.
“We need to make sure US citizens are safe. It’s completely fair for a country to reduce those numbers or even end the program,” she said.
However, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West said ending the program won’t stop terror attacks.
“Most of those who have engaged in terrorism did not come to America through that program. There is no evidence that it is responsible for people with bad intentions,” he said.