On Tuesday October 31, 2017 at approximately 3:05p.m. kids were leaving school getting ready for trick or treating but were blindsided with a real halloween horror.
There was what is thought to be a terrorist attack. A 29 year old immigrant from Uzbekistan, in a rental home depot truck, deliberately drove into a bike lane hitting nearly two dozen bikers and pedestrians, shouting, "Allah Akbar" or God is Great in Arabic. He then continued down the road until crashing into a school bus injuring passengers aboard, two of which were children.
Thats not even the end of it. He then go out of the truck and began running with a pellet and paintball gun. He was finally stopped when a police officer shot him, making him fall to the floor, finally stopping the horror. Many witnesses were children as school had just recessed, and at first many thought it was a halloween prank. It was no prank. The death toll is at eight, six at the scene and two later in the hospital. Twelve others were seriously injured.
Police later found a note among his belongings which described his involvement in ISIS. Investigators also found a bag with multiple knives, a stun gun and two cell phones. One phone contained videos of ISIS propaganda and the other a search history of information on renting a truck, dating back to weeks ago. Making this seem premeditated.
Although the death toll is much smaller, but still as devastating, this is said to be the deadliest terrorist attack in New York since 9/11. Since the attack, Trump has stated he wants the man to receive the death penalty. He has also used this to implement stronger immigration laws - something he's been itching to do his entire presidency, both controversial topics.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was not happy with Trump's approach. He stated "the last thing we should do is start casting aspersions on whole races of people or whole religions or whole nations. That only makes the situation worse."
There has also been a stir about this attack in relation with the one in Vegas last month. This is considered an act of terror and Trump, as previously stated, is looking towards the death penalty for the attacker, even though the Vegas Shooter had a substantially larger amount of fatalities with 59 dead and 527 injured. While Trump has been moving to change immigration laws as a reaction to the NYC attack, no immediate action was taken in regards to gun laws following the Vegas attack.
The scary thing about this is there were no fatalities by gun. This was by a vehicle. Something everyone has access to. There is already enough debate on gun laws in America. Now there's an increase in using cars as a weapon, but how can they be regulated?
What's even scarier is the attack took place near the World Trade Center, which is unlikely to be an accident.
I urge you to ignore the name of this killer. Too many times have the criminals of such acts become inadvertently famous because there name is plastered through out the news. Instead, I have listed the names of the victims below in hopes that they will be the ones remembered out of respect for them and their families:
Hernán Diego Mendoza,
Diego Enrique Angelini
Alejandro Damián Pagnucco
Ariel Erlij
Hernán Ferruchi
Nicholas Cleves
Darren Drake
Ann-Laure Decadt
Thankfully New Yorkers are strong and brave individuals. However, it's so unfortunate that these are the conditions that made us this way.