U-Haul driver’s NYC ‘rampage’ leaves 1 dead, 7 hurt

NEW YORK — A man driving a U-Haul truck swerved onto sidewalks and plowed into scooter riders in New York City on Monday, killing one person and injuring seven others before police were able to pin the careening vehicle against a building following a mileslong pursuit through Brooklyn.

A 44-year-old man was pronounced dead hours after he was struck and critically injured, according to a law enforcement official. The officials could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The driver was arrested and taken to a police station. His son identified him as Weng Sor, 62, a troubled man with a history of harmful behavior and stints behind bars.

The mayhem unfolded over a harrowing hour as the truck tore through Brooklyn’s bustling Bay Ridge neighborhood, hitting people at several points along the way before veering on and off a highway as police gave chase.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described it as a “violent rampage,” but said there was no evidence of “terrorism involvement.”

The truck, rented by Sor in Florida on Feb. 1, traveled a winding route before police stopped it near the entrance to a tunnel leading from Brooklyn to Manhattan, more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from where the chase began.

Weng Sor’s son, Stephen Sor, 30, told The Associated Press that his father had a history of mental illness and, until recently, was living in Las Vegas, where records show he’s been convicted and served time for multiple acts of violence, including stabbing his own brother.

“Very frequently he’ll choose to skip out on his medications and do something like this,” Stephen Sor said in an interview outside his Brooklyn home. “This isn’t the first time he’s been arrested. It’s not the first time he’s gone to jail.”

The destruction shattered the late-morning routine and immediately evoked memories of other vehicle assaults on bikers and pedestrians in the crowded city, including a terrorist’s deadly 2017 attack that killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path and a disturbed motorist’s rampage through Times Square the same year that killed one and injured 20.

The first report of a truck crashing into pedestrians and cyclists came in at 10:30 a.m., police said, and other reports followed as the vehicle moved through a busy section of Brooklyn, just north of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge along New York Harbor.

The neighborhood, a melting pot of immigrants from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is known as the setting of “Saturday Night Fever,” and parts of TV’s “Blue Bloods.” Each fall, it hosts a leg of the New York City Marathon.

Katherine Aronova said she saw the U-Haul run a red light, hit a delivery worker on an e-bike in the middle of the road and drag him a short distance.

“His face was covered with blood. He was unconscious,” and his shoes were scattered on the sidewalk, Aronova said. “The electric bicycle was destroyed completely.”

A security camera captured the truck clipping a scooter, then swerving onto a sidewalk and nearly plowing into a pedestrian, who dived to safety just in time. A police patrol car then followed the truck down the sidewalk at high speed.

“I was in shock and didn’t know what was happening until I saw the police patrol was chasing it,” a witness, Andrea Vasquez, said in Spanish. “Thank God that man saved himself,” she added of the person who narrowly escaped.

A police officer responding to the incident was among the injured.