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.”
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS