Costume kids: First looked like a prank
Giddy students streamed out of lower Manhattan schools Tuesday afternoon eagerly awaiting a night of festive screams and scares.
But just as some of the costumed young crowds were hitting the streets, they spotted a man running around waving weapons. Some students thought it was a Halloween prank — then quickly realized the chilling truth.
“There was a car crash . . . He came out of one of the cars. He had two guns,” Laith Bahlouli, 14, said of terrorist Sayfullo Saipov.
“We thought it was a Halloween thing . . . [but then] he started running around the highway. There was another guy in a green shirt who was chasing him.”
Giselle Rivera, 20, a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College, heard five or six gunshots but still thought it was a gag until a girl yelled out: “No, this is serious, he really has a gun!”
“Nothing like this ever happens here,” said Rivera, who was 4 years old when 9/11 happened. “It’s crazy something could happen in a neighborhood like this.” Then the chaos escalated. “Two women and a group of children — maybe 10 children — they’re running toward me. I hear one girl screaming, ‘Someone has a gun!’ ” said witness John Williams.
“Like a 5- or 6-year-old girl . . . If I didn’t just hear a girl yelling, ‘He has a gun! He has a gun!’ I might have second-guessed it . . . It’s New York — you hear a lot of noises.”
Police quickly pounced and shot the madman, but frantic parents arriving to pick up their kids at PS 234 on Greenwich Street feared the worst as they saw bloodied bodies and mangled bicycles, victims sheltering in a bus and heavily armed police swarming the neighborhood.
“This is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this before!” said nearly hysterical mom Marissa Davis, 47, who was turned back as she tried to cross West Street to get to her 9- and 12-year-old sons. “I just want to get to my children. I need to know they’re OK.
“They won’t let me through; I don’t know what to do,” she said, adding: “We’re supposed to go pumpkin-carving later.”
One dad, Roberto Crivello, 54, was happier knowing his 7-yearold daughter was safe inside the school building rather than outside on the street.
“I was here through 9/11; this is something else,” he said.
For those still inside classrooms, there was similar confusion — and then fear as they grasped the shocking unfolding reality.
“Everyone was confused,” said Tammy Chan, 22, who was in class at BMCC when the vehicle terror attack began. “The school didn’t tell us anything at first, class was going on . . . We all started getting texts from friends and family that something happened on Chambers [Street], and I came outside to all this — absolute chaos.
“I was scared. It’s Halloween, so I didn’t know if it was serious or not, but this is definitely scary.”
But for some students who had come out of class minutes earlier, there was no question what had happened — they saw the attacker plow his rented truck along a bicycle path and heard the screams and chilling sound of bikes and bodies being crushed.
“I saw one car accident. You know those Home Depot trucks? Like that. I was quite nervous,” said Brooklynite Ali Ithazad, 20.
Hours later, as FBI agents in hazmat suits prowled the streets looking for evidence, some parents were afraid to take their kids outside for what is usually one of the most festive evenings of the year.
“It’s crazy scary. My wife is freaked out,” said a dad whose 7-year-old twins attend PS 234.
“I don’t know if she’s going to want to take the kids out. We’re leaving it up to the kids. I’m worried. It’s hard to take Halloween from the kids.”
Tarik Wallace, 19, who arrived to pick up his shaken girlfriend at BMCC, said, “We were going to go to the Village Halloween Parade later, but now I don’t know.’’
But others defiantly attended the festive march with their kids in tow, determined not to let the attack ruin their fun.
“I almost stayed in. I was listening to sirens, and my husband said we should keep going . . . we really had to rally,” said a Tribeca woman out with her spouse and two children in full pirate regalia.
“You don’t want to not go out,” her husband added.