The motorist who turned a rented pickup truck into a killing machine had been planning the deadly attack on lower Manhattan for weeks and was following the Islamic State playbook “to a T,” the New York City police department’s top anti-terrorism official said Wednesday.
“He did this in the name of ISIS,” John Miller, the NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence, said at a briefing. “He seems to have followed the regimen prescribed.”
Miller said they reached this conclusion after questioning suspect Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov at Bellevue Hospital and recovering a note written in Arabic from the pickup that revealed his allegiance to ISIS.
NBC reported earlier the note found in the pickup Saipov rented from a Home Depot in Passaic, N.J. said “ISIS Lives Forever.”
“It appears he had been planning this for a number of weeks,” Miller said. “He appears to have followed, almost exactly to a “T” the ISIS instructions on “how to carry out an attack.” But officials said there is no indication he was contacted by ISIS.
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Miller confirmed that the 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan was not on the NYPD’s or FBI’s radar but they suspect “he will have some connectivity to subjects who were under investigation.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said earlier that they believe Saipov was a “lone wolf” and not part of some wider plot.
So far, no charges have been filed against Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010. He lives in Paterson, N.J., with his wife.
“We are waiting for an update on his condition,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, much of lower Manhattan remained an armed camp a day after police said Saipov deliberately drove down a bike path and mowed down several people before crashing into a school bus, killing eight people and injuring a dozen more in the deadliest terror attack in New York City since the 9/11 attacks.
The rampage ended when Saipov, who was armed with a pellet gun and a paint ball gun and had several knives in the vehicle, was shot in the abdomen by NYPD Officer Ryan Nash, 28, who has been on the job for just five years.
“He was a hero,” Cuomo said.
The drama played out on Halloween less than a mile away from the World Trade Center.
Five of the victims were from Argentina, one was from Germany, and two were Americans, officials said.
“We now and forever will consider them New Yorkers,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “This violence was an effort to make us blink and we won’t blink.”