A U-Haul truck U-Haul truck rampage in New York driven by c, 62, swerved onto sidewalks and hit cyclists and scooter riders in New York City on Monday, killing one person and injuring eight others. The police arrested Sor after pursuing the truck through Brooklyn for more than three miles. The driver’s son, Stephen Sor, said that his father had a history of mental illness and harmful behavior. He had served time in Las Vegas for multiple acts of violence, including stabbing his own brother. The police commissioner described the incident as a “violent rampage,” but there was no evidence of terrorism involvement.
The incident occurred in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, hitting people at several points before veering on and off a highway as police gave chase. The nine people struck by the vehicle ranged in age from 30 to 66, and all were men. One of the injured people was a police officer. The 44-year-old man who was killed suffered a head injury when he was hit by the truck roughly a half-hour after it struck the first victim.
Sor’s winding route ended when a police cruiser cut it off and blocked it against a building near the entrance to a tunnel leading from Brooklyn to Manhattan. His son told The Associated Press that his father had a history of skipping his medications and harmful behavior. Sor rented the truck in West Palm Beach, Florida on February 1 and was due to return it on March 3. U-Haul had no record of Sor previously renting from the company.
The Bay Ridge neighborhood is a melting pot of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, 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. Witnesses recounted seeing 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. A security camera captured the truck clipping a scooter, then swerving onto a sidewalk and nearly hitting a pedestrian who dived to safety just in time. A police patrol car then followed the truck down the sidewalk at high speed.
After the chase ended, authorities examined the vehicle to make sure it didn’t contain explosives. Sor’s son, Stephen Sor, was surprised when Weng Sor showed up in Brooklyn in the middle of the night about a week ago. He said they didn’t speak often and described their relationship as “rocky.”
This U-Haul Truck Rampage in New York immediately evokes 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.
