NEW YORK—The man accused of mowing people down along a bike path went on the deadly rental-truck rampage “in the name of ISIS” and planned it for weeks, closely following the extremist group’s online instructions, police said Wednesday.
Investigators, meanwhile, questioned Sayfullo Saipov in his hospital bed, working to extract information about the attack that killed eight people Tuesday near the World Trade Center memorial. Saipov, 29, was shot by a police officer after jumping from his Home Depot pickup.
He left behind knives and notes, handwritten in Arabic, that said in essence that Daesh, also known as ISIS, “would endure forever,” said John Miller, deputy police commissioner for intelligence.
“He did this in the name of ISIS” and seems to have plotted it “for a number of weeks” and conducted reconnaissance, Miller said. “He appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out.”
In the past few years, Daesh has exhorted followers online to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have all seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016.
A November 2016 issue of the group’s online magazine detailed features that an attack truck or van should have, suggested renting such a vehicle and recommended targeting crowded streets and outdoor gatherings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a militant-monitoring agency.
Carlos Batista, a neighbour of Saipov’s in Paterson, New Jersey, said he had seen the suspect and two friends using the same model of rented truck several times in the past three weeks.
It was not clear whether Saipov had been on authorities’ radar. Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated.