New York 'terror attack' update - Truck driver identified.

 






  New York Authorities 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. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said officials would announce the charges late Wednesday afternoon.
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.

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 Trump had called Saipov an “animal” and, after criticizing the way the country’s legal system treats suspects. But it was unclear whether the Trump administration had considered following through on this and remove Saipov from the federal legal system and instead send him to the military justice system.
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.”

The gruesome route, which remained a crime scene on Wednesday, was strewn with bodies, wreckage and scattered personal items such as purses, backpacks and shoes, resembling the scenes witnessed in Berlin, London, Barcelona and other places where vehicles have been used for attacks.

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