A man who went on a deadly rampage with a U-Haul truck on Monday in New York City was suffering from an apparent mental health crisis and said he started mowing people down after seeing an “invisible object” coming toward him, police said on Tuesday.
Weng Sor, 62, was charged with murder and attempted murder in the attack, which unfolded over a harrowing 48 minutes over a large swath of Brooklyn’s bustling Bay Ridge neighborhood. Police eventually pinned the truck against a building after a kilometers-long chase.
One person was killed and eight people were injured as the U-Haul truck veered onto sidewalks and plowed into bicyclists, moped riders and at least one pedestrian, hitting people at various points along a circuitous route.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The truck also rammed a police vehicle, and the officer inside was among the injured.
The scope and length of the destruction led to questions about the New York Police Department’s response and whether the pursuit — which at one point involved a police car speeding after the U-Haul up onto the sidewalk as a man dived to safety — put more people in harm’s way.
Sor, a troubled man with a history of violence and mental illness, told police that seeing an “invisible object” set him off, Chief of Detectives James Essig told reporters.
Sor’s family said he had stopped taking his medication, Essig said.
“He states when he’s driving his van he sees an ‘invisible object’ come towards the car. At that point, he says: ‘I’ve had enough,’ and he goes on his rampage,” Essig said. “There was no object.”
Sor, who lived in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his mother, traveled to New York last week after spending time in Florida and was pulled over twice in the U-Haul in the days prior to the attack, police said.
He was walked out of a police station and was expected to be arraigned late on Tuesday or yesterday. Court records did not list a lawyer who could comment on his behalf.
The U-Haul struck three people on mopeds, three people on bicycles, one person on an e-bike and one person who was on foot as the truck moved through a busy section of Brooklyn, just north of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge along New York Harbor, police said.
The victims ranged in age from 30 to 66.
A 44-year-old man riding a moped died from a head injury after he was hit by the truck roughly a half-hour after it struck the first victim.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the man, whose name has not been made public, was a single father “raising those children on his own.”
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