HE HAD ISIS FLAG IN SLAY TRUCK
Uzbek came to US in ’10 & drove for Uber
The man who allegedly killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path Tuesday is an Uzbek national who pledged allegiance to ISIS in notes left behind in his truck along with an image of the Islamic State flag.
Sayfullo Saipov — who came to the United States in 2010 — rented a flatbed pickup truck at a Home Depot in Passaic, NJ, and used it for the terrorist attack, according to law-enforcement sources. Saipov reportedly yelled
“Allahu akbar” after exiting the vehicle while wielding a paintball gun and a BB gun. He was shot and wounded by police.
Investigators discovered the note and flag inside the truck after the rampage.
The 29-year-old suspect lives in Paterson, NJ, and worked as an Uber driver. The only offenses on his record were minor traffic violations in Missouri, Pennsylvania and the Garden State.
Uber said that it has been in contact with the FBI and that Saipov had passed its background check.
People who know Saipov gave opposing descriptions of him.
A Florida man described him as “very friendly” and was shocked to learn of the rampage.
“He is very good guy, he is very friendly . . . He is like little brother . . . He look at me like big brother,” Kobiljon Matkarov, 37, told The Post by phone Tuesday from his home in Miamisburg, Ohio.
Matkarov met Saipov in Florida about five years ago, a couple of years after Saipov came from Uzbekistan. He said Saipov had been living in New Jersey as recently as this past summer.
Matkarov said Saipov got along well with his five children.
“My kids like him — he is always playing with them,” Matkarov remembered.
When Matkarov had a trip planned to Uzbekistan in June and was flying out of JFK with his children and wife, he reached out to Saipov for a ride because he was nearby.
“He dropped me to the airport with my family,” he said. “I called him and said I needed a ride.”
But when it came time for the family to say goodbye at the airport, Matkarov’s son asked for a picture with Saipov, and he refused.
“He no like that. He said no,” Matkarov said.
Still, the friend was shocked when he learned that Saipov is the suspect in the bloodbath along the West Street, saying he didn’t know him to have any terrorist connections.
A mosque that Saipov reportedly attended with his family had been under surveillance by the NYPD in 2006, but that was before Saipov came to the United States.
While Matkarov liked his friend, Saipov was infamous as a hothead at his local supermarket in Paterson.
“Every time he came here he was always erratic or arguing with the cashiers,” the manager at the Farm Boy Super Fresh Supermarket on Getty Avenue told The Post.
“He would get angry very fast,” she said. “He would break the cans, dumb things.”
The manager, who declined to reveal her name, said Saipov was very rude to the cashiers and called them “uneducated.”
“I feel like he was prejudiced to the cashiers — whether they were covered or not in a hijab.
He would belittle them,” the manager said.
“He was talking good English, proper, but he would call the cashiers dumb, uneducated — how they didn’t know how to scan the items.”
Saipov also regularly argued about the price of, of all things, Canada Dry ginger ale.
“Soda was the problem. He would come here and buy soda,” the manager said.
“He would give us a hard time on the 12-pack Canada Dry,” the manager said.
“If it was one price he would want his own price.”
The suspect several listed addresses other than Paterson, including in Ohio and Tampa, Fla.
Officials executed search warrants in the three states Tuesday evening, sources said.
Saipov’s van, with Florida plates, was left in a Home Depot parking lot in Passaic.
Meanwhile, ISIS supporters online praised the massacre on pro-ISIS channels, according to New York Times reporter Ruk- mini Callimachi.
“Sounds like one of our brothers,” said one person named Abdullah Sami.
“Trick-or-treat New York City. Alhamdulillah [‘praise Allah’] Happy Hauntings.”
According to Callimachi, the pro-ISIS channels are “not official communications by the terrorist group,” but still offer insight into what its supporters were doing following the attack.