Suspect’s life under the microscope

NEW YORK — Some saw him as disagreeable and argumentative, others as quiet and prayerful. He was said to be hardworking but also seemed to simmer with disillusionment over financial and career setbacks.

As Sayfullo Saipov lay in a hospital bed Wednesday, police tried to piece together the life of the 29-year-old immigrant accused of driving a truck onto a New York bike path and killing eight people. A fuller portrait began to emerge of the suspect who was described by President Donald Trump as an animal and by Mayor Bill de Blasio as a coward.

Saipov legally emigrated from Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic and predominantly Sunni Muslim nation north of Afghanistan that is estimated to have produced hundreds if not thousands of supporters for the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notes found at the crime scene indicate Saipov acted in the name of ISIS, authorities said.

After arriving in the U.S. in 2010, Saipov made his first home in Ohio, in the Stow area, acquaintances said.

Another Uzbek immigrant, Mirrakhmat Muminov, came to know Saipov and said he was most struck by how provocative he was.

Sometimes, he would stir quarrels over weighty topics such as politics or the Mideast peace process, Muminov said, but he could also grow angry over something as simple as a picnic.

“He had the habit of disagreeing with everybody,” said Muminov, a 38-year-old from Stow who works as a truck driver, just as Saipov once did.

Muminov described Saipov as “aggressive” and suspected he held radical views, though Muminov never heard him speak of the Islamic State.

“He was not happy with his life,” Muminov said.

According to some media reports, Saipov lived for a time in Kyrgyzstan, another former Soviet nation that borders Uzbekistan and has a sizable ethnic Uzbek minority.

In June 2010, the same year Saipov came to the U.S., the area near the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan where he reportedly lived saw violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that left at least 470 people dead. Nearly three-quarters of them were ethnic Uzbeks. The violence prompted an exodus of Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan.

A marriage license filed in Summit County, Ohio, shows Saipov married a woman named Nozima Odilova on April 12, 2013. But the couple eventually left Ohio for Florida. Saipov had a driver’s license from that state, and some records showed an address for him at a Tampa apartment complex.

FBI agents interviewed residents at the complex Tuesday, but some who lived there said they knew nothing of their former neighbor. Records show he worked as a commercial truck driver and formed a pair of trucking businesses that could have kept him on the road for long stretches.

He had a handful of driving violations and was arrested last year in Missouri after failing to appear in court on a citation for brake defects. Jail records indicate he was detained for less than an hour.

Saipov and his family moved from Florida to New Jersey in June, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Wednesday, FBI agents removed evidence bags from an apartment building in Paterson, just northwest of New York City.

Maria Rivera, who lives down the street, said she sometimes saw Saipov talking on his phone or with two or three other men in the neighborhood. A month ago, when she saw a little girl walking down the street, she asked the child who her mother was.

She pointed in the direction of Saipov’s home, Rivera said.

“He came out, grabbed the baby and he didn’t say nothing to me,” she said.

Birth records in Ohio show that Saipov and his wife had two daughters, ages 2 and 4. A neighbor in New Jersey said they had a third child, a boy, earlier this year.

Another neighbor of Saipov, who is Rivera’s son, 23-yearold Carlos Batista, said he saw Saipov and two friends come and go several times in the past three weeks in the same model Home Depot pickup used in the attack.

Muminov said he last heard from Saipov a few months ago when he called asking for advice on insurance. He said he heard from friends of Saipov that his truck engine blew a few months ago.

“He lost his job,” Muminov said. “When someone loses their truck, they lose their life.”

That may have led Saipov to drive for Uber, which confirmed he had passed a background check and driven for six months, making more than 1,400 trips.