`Rampage' by a U-Haul driver leaves 8 hurt, authorities say
NEW YORK >> A man driving a U-Haul truck swerved onto sidewalks and plowed into scooter riders in New York City on Monday, injuring multiple people before police were able to pin the careening vehicle against a building following a mileslong pursuit through Brooklyn.
At least eight people were hurt, two critically. The driver was arrested. 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 hour 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 truck, rented by Sor in Florida on Feb. 1, traveled a winding route before police stopped it near the entrance to a tunnel leading from Brooklyn to Manhattan, more than 3 miles from the chase start.
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's been 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 first report of a truck crashing into pedestrians and cyclists came in at 10:30 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.
A security camera captured the truck clipping a scooter, then swerving onto a sidewalk and nearly plowing into a pedestrian, who dived to safety just in time. A police patrol car then followed the truck down the sidewalk at high speed.
“I was in shock and didn't know what was happening until I saw the police patrol was chasing it,” a witness, Andrea Vasquez, said in Spanish. “Thank God that man saved himself,” she added of the person who narrowly escaped.