Suspect ‘did this in name of ISIS’
Authorities: Saipov left notes pledging allegiance; second man sought in Manhattan rampage
NEW YORK >> Authorities on Wednesday said a 29-year-old man accused of mowing down pedestrians and cyclists on a Manhattan bike path, killing eight people, had plotted weeks before carrying out the attack in the name of the Islamic State.
Officials identified the suspected attacker as Sayfullo Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States who arrived in the country from Uzbekistan in 2010 through a diversity visa program.
They said Saipov was influenced by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and its violent tactics after coming to the United States.
Authorities also said they were looking for another man, identified as 32-year-old Muhammad Kadirov, in connection with the investigation of
the attack, though they gave no indication why they were doing so or if he was suspected of playing some sort of role.
Federal officials on Wednesday filed terrorism charges against Saipov. He was charged with one count of material support to a terrorist organization and a count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle.
According to the charging document, Saipov was inspired to carry out the attack after watching ISIS videos on his phone. He began plotting an attack a year ago and, about two months ago, “decided to use a truck in order to inflict maximum damage against civilians,” the charging document states. Saipov chose Halloween for the attack, federal authorities say, because he thought more civilians would be on the streets.
Saipov left notes pledging his allegiance to the group, authorities said, though they have not identified any direct connections between Saipov and the organization.
These notes, which included symbols and words, were handwritten in Arabic essentially said “that the Islamic State would endure forever,” John Miller, the deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a briefing on Wednesday. The Islamic State has urged its followers to use vehicles to carry out attacks.
“He did this in the name of ISIS,” Miller said. “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 their followers on how to carry out such an attack.”
The new details about the attack came as authorities continued to explore the violent rampage that tore through a stretch of Lower Manhattan and became New York’s deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
Police say Saipov climbed into a rental truck on Tuesday afternoon and careened down a bike path along the Hudson River, slamming into numerous people before he was wounded by police and taken into custody. He drove southbound on the path “at a high rate of
speed” and appeared to specifically target cyclists and pedestrians, Miller said.
Six people were pronounced dead at the scene and two more at area hospitals. Among the dead were five Argentines gathered for a reunion and one Belgian. Two Americans, from New York City and New Jersey, were also killed.
The victims included seven men and one woman; they ranged in ages from 23 to 48. Twelve more people were injured, some critically, during the carnage. Nine of the injured remained hospitalized on Wednesday, according to Daniel A. Nigro, the New York fire commissioner.
Exactly how Saipov would be charged was unclear earlier Wednesday, when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Trump
administration considered him an “enemy combatant.”
President Donald Trump had called Saipov an “animal” and, after criticizing the way the country’s legal system treats suspects, said he was considering sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay.
Police on Wednesday offered their first timeline of the attack. Saipov rented a large Home Depot truck in New Jersey at 2:06 p.m. on Tuesday, they said. Using license plate readers and cameras, police tracked his travels into Manhattan and onto the West Side Highway.
He drove onto the bike path at 3:04 p.m., police said. The rampage down the path continued until he collided with a school bus, injuring still more people, at which point he emerged from the truck, according to the police narrative.
A stream of 911 calls soon came in reporting the injuries, the bus accident and a man with a gun in the street.
Officer Ryan Nash, at a nearby school for an unrelated call, approached Saipov and shot him in the abdomen. The weapons Saipov were brandishing turned out to be a pellet gun and a paintball gun, police said. Officials praised Nash for his heroism in stopping Saipov, with Mayor Bill de Blasio, D, calling his actions “extraordinary.”
Investigators have spoken to Saipov, who remained hospitalized Wednesday, but officials declined to publicly reveal what he said. They also continued to scour his background and life for clues, an effort that included carrying out search warrants and interviewing people who knew him.
Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States, came to the country in March 2010 and had lived in Florida, Ohio and New Jersey, according to authorities. He had been an Uber driver without any worrisome safety reports, the app said, and was banned after the attack.
He had never been the subject of an FBI investigation or a New York police intelligence investigation, Miller said. However, Saipov had been known to authorities. According to a law enforcement official familiar with the current investigation, Saipov’s name surfaced during an earlier Homeland Security probe into some of his friends.
New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo, D, said authorities believe Saipov was a lone wolf who became “radicalized domestically” while living in the United States.
“The evidence shows … that after he came to the United States is when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics,” Cuomo said during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day” earlier Wednesday. “We have no evidence yet of associations or continuing plot or associated plots, and our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he himself performed.”
On Wednesday, Trump tweeted critically about Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saying that Saipov had entered the country through a diversity visa lottery program he blamed on the senator. Trump pledged to get rid of that program, seizing on it and Schumer as political targets.
After Trump repeatedly criticized the visa program, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed Saipov came to the United States with a diversity immigrant visa.
Trump has argued for stricter screening of immigrants, which he said is needed to prevent terrorism, while opponents of his policies have repeatedly gone to court to block his efforts. Uzbekistan was not among the countries named in any version of the president’s travel ban, which largely targeted a number of majority-Muslim countries and would not have kept out anyone behind deadly terrorist attacks in the United States.