NYC Terror Latest: Suspect Charged With ISIS-Inspired Attack

NEW YORK, NY — The man accused of careening a truck down a bike path on New York's West Side, killing eight and injuring a dozen more, was charged Wednesday evening.

Federal prosecutors from Manhattan unveiled two charges against Sayfullo Saipov, 29 – providing material support to a terrorist organization and violence and destruction of a motor vehicle "with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life."

Saipov showed no remorse for the killing spree, according to a criminal complaint — he told investigators that "he felt good about what he had done" and asked to have the Islamic State group's flag hung in his hopital room.

The court filing says that he decided to carry out the attack after watching ISIS videos – including one of a beheading – on his cell phone. Investigators recovered around 90 videos from the phone.

Prosecutors say that he had started planning the attack more than a year ago and that he decided to use a truck so he could cause "maximum damage against civilians."

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He chose Halloween for the same reason, they said – more people would be on the street. He originally planned to drive the truck onto the Brooklyn Bridge to kill more people after the bike path massacre, the criminal complaint says.

Officials added that they recovered two cell phones as well as several knives that had been in the truck.

Saipov had carried out the terrorist strike according to directions from the Islamic State group, said John Miller, the NYPD's deputy counterterrorism commissioner. The suspect was shot by police at the scene and taken to a hospital.

“He did this in the name of ISIS," Miller told reporters at police headquarters Wednesday morning. Police found handwritten notes in Arabic indicating Saipov's connection to the terrorist group, he said.

The FBI had said Wednesday that investigators were also looking for Mukhammadzoir Kadirov in connection with the attack, but he has not been named a suspect. Like Saipov, Kadirov is an Uzbek immigrant, the FBI said.

At the press conference announcing the charges against Saipov, Bill Sweeney, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office, said they were no longer looking for Kadirov but did not elaborate. WNYC reported that the FBI had located him.

Saipov's Tuesday afternoon attack killed eight people and injured a dozen others on the path near the West Side Highway between Houston and Chambers streets, just blocks north of the World Trade Center, officials said.

Saipov followed, "almost exactly to a T," the Islamic State's published instructions on how to kill as many people as possible with a large truck, Miller said. The terrorist group calls such attacks a "just terror tactic." Similar strikes have killed and injured scores of people in France, Germany and Sweden in the past two years.

Police found the notes in Saipov's truck, which he rented from a New Jersey Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. They also recovered several knives, a paintball gun and a pellet gun, Miller said.

"The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever," Miller said.

Investigators believe Saipov, a resident of Paterson, N.J., came into Manhattan to scope out the bike path along the Hudson River at some point before the attack, said Bill Sweeney, the FBI's assistant director in charge for New York City.

Saipov is affiliated with the Islamic State group and was "radicalized" in the United States, Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN earlier Wednesday. He is in critical but stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, where he's in police custody, officials said.

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Saipov legally immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in March 2010, officials said. He was never on the FBI's radar, but investigators are looking into his contacts with suspected terrorists, Miller said.

"He will have some connectivity to individuals who were the subjects of investigation, though he himself was not," Miller said.

The FBI and NYPD are still gathering evidence from the scene, interviewing witnesses and Saipov's associates, and conducting searches around the country, officials said. Saipov previously lived in Ohio and Florida. His wife is cooperating with authorities and had no knowledge of the attack, NBC News reported Wednesday.

There are currently no credible terrorist threats to New York City, officials said.

“This was the worst terror attack in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001," NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said Wednesday.

According to investigators, Saipov rented a pickup truck from a Home Depot in Passaic, N.J. at 2:06 p.m. He drove it across the George Washington Bridge and exited onto the West Side Highway at 2:43 p.m.

Officials said nothing about the rental seemed suspicious to employees at the store, who are cooperating with investigators.

When he got to Houston Street at 3:04 p.m., Saipov drove off West Street and started speeding down the bike path, running over cyclists and pedestrians along the way, Miller said, citing video footage and interviews with witnesses. He collided with a school bus at Chambers Street a few minutes later, injuring several others.

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More than a dozen calls flooded 911 at 3:08 p.m. reporting the crash, pedestrian injuries and a man who appeared to be waving a gun, Miller said. Three cops from the NYPD's 1st Precinct got to the scene. One of them, 28-year-old Brian Nash, shot Saipov in the stomach, "bringing the attack to an end," Miller said.

FBI investigators will be at the scene collecting evidence through early this evening, Sweeney said. The West Side Highway between 14th Street and the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel will be closed at least until then, the NYPD said.

The federal Joint Terrorism Task Force's New York City and New Jersey offices are working to retrace Saipov's steps and determine exactly how he planned the attack, officials said.

"We want to be able to reconstruct this entire trip," Miller said.

Law enforcement agencies are doubling the number of officers at heavily populated areas around the city, including airports, tunnels and subway stations, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. The NYPD is also deploying more heavily armed guards and counterterrorism officers, Chief of Department Carlos Gomez said.

"You’ll see more officers on the trains, they will see more officers on the platforms," Gomez said Wednesday. "They should expect more bag checks and more stations."

Saipov reportedly came to the U.S. through a federal program that offers visas to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the country. President Donald Trump wants to end the so-called diversity visa program, he said Wednesday. He told reporters he may send Saipov to the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo," Trump said.

The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack Wednesday. The Muslim advocacy group is hosting an interfaith vigil for the victims at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Foley Square.

"Since the goal of such heinous crimes is to divide our nation, it is incumbent on Americans of all faiths and backgrounds to frustrate that criminal objective by standing united in the face of terror," Afaf Nasher, CAIR's New York executive director, said in a statement.

The attack didn't deter more than a million New Yorkers from reveling in Tuesday's Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. And more than 2.5 million people will take to the streets Sunday to run in or watch the New York City Marathon — though they'll see a beefed-up police presence across the five boroughs, including snipers watching from above.

"We understand this was an attack on our values," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "It was an effort to break our spirit, but as an effort to break our spirit it failed."

Read the full criminal complaint against Saipov below.

Lead image: Undated photo provided by St. Charles County Department of Corrections via KMOV shows Sayfullo Saipov. (St. Charles County Department of Corrections/KMOV via AP)