Bike path rampage: What we know about the suspect

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Thursday, November 2, 2017
Bike path rampage: What we know about the suspect
Anthony Johnson has the latest from the West Side Highway terror suspect's home in Paterson, New Jersey.

LOWER MANHATTAN, New York (WABC) -- Details are being compiled the suspect who police say mowed down pedestrians in the bike lane of the West Side Highway in what is being investigated as a terror attack in Lower Manhattan.

Investigators identified as 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who had a driver's license from Tampa, Florida, but also had ties to New Jersey and Ohio.

Authorities believe he rented a white pickup truck from Home Depot in Passaic, New Jersey, and drove it into the bicycle path on West Street, along the West Side Highway, entering at Houston Street at 3:05 p.m. Police say he drove southbound, striking several pedestrians and bicyclists, before crashing into a school bus at Chambers Street, injuring two adults and two children.

He then exited the vehicle, brandishing a paintball gun and a pellet gun, and was shot by a police officer and taken into custody.

This photo shows him in police custody following the incident:

Authorities say he came to the United States in 2010 from Uzbekistan under what is called the Diversity Visa Program, which offers a lottery for people from countries with few immigrants in America.

The vetting process for all visa programs changed two years later. Today, anyone traveling under that program is vetted against a broad array of classified and unclassified information. The change was prompted by the terror-related arrests in Kentucky of two individuals who came through an Iraqi refugee program. There was information in DOD files that linked these people to IED attacks in Iraq. At that time, though, the visa vetting process did not include access to that information.

Sources tell ABC News that in addition to an address in Tampa, he also lived in Ohio and most recently, in Paterson, New Jersey, where he lived with his wife and three children, according to a law enforcement official.

Here's a look at his address listed in Tampa, where police and reporters scoped out following Tuesday's attack:

He was also the registered statutory agent for a pair of Ohio-based trucking companies: Sayf Motors Inc. in Cincinnati, and Bright Auto LLC in Cuyahoga Falls.

Uber confirmed that Saipov had worked as an Uber driver, and the company said he had passed a background check but has since been banned from the app.

"We are horrified by this senseless act of violence," an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. "Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance."

Saipov was interviewed in 2015 by federal agents after he was listed as a point of contact for two different men whose names were entered into the Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit's list, after they came to the United States from "threat countries," overstayed their tourists visas and vanished, a federal official told ABC News. Saipov was never the main focus of these investigations and he was never the subject of his own case file.

Investigators searching Saipov's online activities have found social media links to people who are or were subjects of terror investigations. However, the portrait that is emerging so far is of someone who found ISIS propaganda online with no sense that he was part of a cell or in any way directed to do this.

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