Suddenly, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day; and it was moving fast.
By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, 22 other people were injured, and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of panic and carnage.
The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.
Photo: Reuters
“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 44th Street, and saw the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”
Unfolding in one of New York’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the episode instantly raised the specter of terrorism.
An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in 2010 remains a potent memory for many and recent terrorist attacks overseas have shown the damage that vehicles can do when used as weapons.
The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a US Navy veteran from the Bronx, New York, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, officials said, moving quickly to assuage fears of terrorism.
“Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage.
Rojas appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he mowed down the crowds, according to several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.
Under questioning by investigators, he rambled and talked about various things, making some statements suggesting that he might have wanted to provoke the police into killing him, the officials said.
It was about noon when Rojas swerved onto a curb near 42nd Street and then accelerated north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, which runs one way, southbound — crashing into people for block after block.
Alyssa Elsman, 18, of Portage, Michigan, was killed in the havoc, officials said.
Her 13-year-old sister was injured.
A security guard at a building at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue said he had watched through the lobby windows as the Honda sped past and drove over a woman.
“She just hit the floor and he went over her,” said the guard, who did not give his name.
Other witnesses described their horror at seeing terrified bystanders scramble for safety.
“It was going at a fast rate of speed and to me it looked like it was trying to hit as many people as possible,” said Annie Donahey, 24, who had just left work. “People were trying to jump out of the way.”
The car raced on, crossing 45th Street before smashing into barriers in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
The driver tried to escape, but he was quickly surrounded.
“He started trying to run away,” said Asa Lowe, 42, who had been walking on Seventh Avenue. “Traffic cops grabbed him. Regular citizens grabbed him. We became the city we need to be today.”
Rojas offered alternate explanations for the episode to investigators, according to the law enforcement officials, who said that investigators had not come to any immediate conclusions.
“He’s just rambling and saying crazy stuff,” one of officials said, adding that Rojas had talked of hearing voices and having hallucinations. “He tried to fight the police.”
Two officials said Rojas had tested negative for alcohol while one official said preliminary tests had indicated he was under the influence of PCP, a mood-altering drug.
Rojas eventually asked for a lawyer, ending the questioning, another official said.
Another witness, Magdy Tawfik, a hot-dog vendor who was working near the corner of 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, said he had seen the car hit three people around him.
“One of the girls who was hit must have been about 20,” Tawfik said. “She looked like my daughter. I couldn’t stop crying.”
He recounted the episode about a half-hour after it ended, the corner still a frantic scene of emergency workers, police officers in tactical gear and caution tape.
Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital for an evaluation before being discharged into police custody.
He was late on Thursday charged with one count of murder, 20 counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion