NEW YORK (Reuters) -One of nine people struck when a man drove a rented U-Haul truck into pedestrians in New York City died from his injuries on Tuesday, police said, as the driver was charged with murder and attempted murder.
The suspect, identified by police as 62-year-old Weng Sor of Las Vegas, has been accused of deliberately plowing into pedestrians and bike riders in multiple locations in Monday’s rampage through two Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Police told a news conference that Sor was believed to be suffering from a “mental health crisis” at the time of the incident. He was arrested several miles from the scene of the attack after police pinned his vehicle.
A surveillance video shows the truck speeding onto a sidewalk as a pedestrian leaps out its path, with a police car in pursuit.
One of the driver’s victims, a 44-year-old man who suffered head injuries, was declared dead at a nearby hospital, police said. His name has not been released. The other people hit, including a police officer, were not as badly hurt.
Police said Sor rented the truck in Florida on Feb. 1 and drove it to New York.
The suspect’s son, Stephen Sor, told the Associated Press that his father had struggled with mental illness and sometimes failed to take medication. Stephen Sor said his father had been living in Las Vegas and that he was surprised when he appeared in New York City last week.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Robert Birsel)
