`Rampage' by U-Haul driver leaves 1 dead, at least 8 injured
A man driving a U-Haul truck swerved onto sidewalks and plowed into cyclists and scooter riders in New York City on Monday, killing one person and injuring eight others before police were able to pin the careening vehicle against a building following a mileslong pursuit through Brooklyn.
The driver was arrested and taken to a police station. His son identified him as Weng Sor, 62, a troubled man with a history of harmful behavior and stints behind bars.
The mayhem unfolded over a harrowing 48 minutes as the truck tore through Brooklyn's bustling Bay Ridge neighborhood, hitting people at several points along the way before veering on and off a highway as police gave chase.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described it as a “violent rampage,” but said there was no evidence of “terrorism involvement.”
The nine people struck by the vehicle ranged in age from 30 to 66. All were men. One of the injured people was a police officer.
The 44-year-old man who was killed suffered a head injury when he was hit by the truck roughly a half-hour after it struck the first victim, the police department said in a statement.
The truck's winding route ended when a police cruiser cut it off and blocked it against a building near the entrance to a tunnel leading from Brooklyn to Manhattan, more than 3 miles from where the chase began.
Weng Sor's son, Stephen Sor, 30, told The Associated Press that his father had a history of mental illness and until recently was living in Las Vegas, where records show he was convicted and served time for multiple acts of violence, including stabbing his own brother.
“Very frequently he'll choose to skip out on his medications and do something like this,” Stephen Sor said in an interview outside his Brooklyn home. “This isn't the first time he's been arrested. It's not the first time he's gone to jail.”
The destruction shattered the latemorning routine and immediately evoked memories of other vehicle assaults on bikers and pedestrians in the crowded city, including a terrorist's deadly 2017 attack that killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path and a disturbed motorist's rampage through Times Square the same year that killed one and injured 20.
The truck struck the first victim at 10:17 a.m., police said, and other reports followed as the vehicle moved through a busy section of Brooklyn, just north of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge along New York Harbor.