NEW YORK (AP) — Some saw him as disagreeable and argumentative, others as quiet and prayerful. He was said to be hardworking but also seemed to simmer with disillusionment over financial and career setbacks.
As Sayfullo Saipov lay in a hospital bed Wednesday, police tried to piece together the life of the 29-year-old immigrant accused of driving a truck onto a New York bike path and killing eight people. A fuller portrait began to emerge of the suspect who was described by the president as an animal and by the mayor as a coward.
Saipov legally emigrated from Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic and predominantly Sunni Muslim nation north of Afghanistan that is estimated to have produced hundreds if not thousands of supporters for the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Notes found at the crime scene indicate Saipov acted in the name of IS, authorities said.
After arriving in the U.S. in 2010, Saipov made his first home in Ohio, acquaintances said.
Another Uzbek immigrant, Mirrakhmat Muminov, came to know Saipov and said he was most struck by how provocative he was.
Sometimes, he would stir quarrels over weighty topics such as politics or the Mideast peace process, Muminov said, but he could also grow angry over something as simple as a picnic.
“He had the habit of disagreeing with everybody,” said Muminov, a 38-year-old from Stow, Ohio, who works as a truck driver, just as Saipov once did.
Muminov described Saipov as “aggressive” and suspected he held radical views, though Muminov never heard him speak of the Islamic State group.
“He was not happy with his life,” Muminov said.
According to some media reports, Saipov lived for a time in Kyrgyzstan, another former Soviet nation that borders Uzbekistan and has a sizable ethnic Uzbek minority.
In June of 2010, the same year Saipov came to the U.S., the area near the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan where he reportedly lived saw violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that left at least 470 people dead. Nearly three-quarters of them were ethnic Uzbeks. The violence prompted an exodus of Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan.
A marriage license filed in Summit County, Ohio, shows Saipov married a woman named Nozima Odilova on April 12, 2013. But the couple eventually left Ohio for Florida. Saipov had a driver’s license from that state, and some records showed an address for him at a Tampa apartment complex.
FBI agents interviewed residents at the complex Tuesday, but some who lived there said they knew nothing of their former neighbor. Records show he worked as a commercial truck driver and formed a pair of trucking businesses that could have kept him on the road for long stretches.
He had a handful of driving violations and was arrested last year in Missouri after failing to appear in court on a citation for brake defects. Jail records indicate he was detained for less than an hour.
Saipov and his family moved from Florida to New Jersey in June, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Wednesday, FBI agents removed evidence bags from an apartment building in Paterson, just northwest of New York City.
Maria Rivera, who lives down the street, said she sometimes saw Saipov talking on his phone or with two or three other men in the neighborhood. A month ago, when she saw a little girl walking down the street, she asked the child who her mother was.
She pointed in the direction of Saipov’s home, Rivera said.
“He came out, grabbed the baby and he didn’t say nothing to me,” she said.
Birth records in Ohio show that Saipov and his wife had two daughters, ages 2 and 4. A neighbor in New Jersey said they had a third child, a boy, earlier this year.
Another neighbor of Saipov, who is Rivera’s son, 23-year-old Carlos Batista, said he saw Saipov and two friends come and go several times in the past three weeks in the same model Home Depot pickup used in the attack. He also recalled a recent incident in which Saipov played the role of peacemaker.
Two of Saipov’s friends were angry Batista was riding a dirt bike up and down the street and ordered him to stop. Tempers flared and words escalated until Saipov came outside.
He “basically was the peacemaker,” Batista said. “He calmed everything down.”
Muminov said he last heard from Saipov a few months ago when he called asking for advice on insurance. He said he heard from friends of Saipov that his truck engine blew a few months ago.
“He lost his job,” Muminov said. “When someone loses their truck, they lose their life.”
That may have led Saipov to drive for Uber, which confirmed he had passed a background check and driven for six months, making more than 1,400 trips.
Authorities said Saipov never was the subject of an investigation by the New York Police Department’s intelligence bureau or the FBI, but they were looking at how he might be connected to the subjects of other investigations. Saipov had been planning his attack for weeks, police said.
After plowing through the bike path and into a school bus, authorities said, he emerged from the vehicle, brandishing air guns and yelling “God is great!” in Arabic.
He remained at Bellevue Hospital, where he was recovering from being shot by the police officer who stopped the attack.
Late in the afternoon, he was taken to a federal court hearing after a terrorism charge and other counts were filed against him by prosecutors, who said he was “consumed by hate and a twisted ideology.”
Saipov appeared in a wheelchair, with his hands and feet shackled. He didn’t enter a plea or seek bail.
As he lay in bed at the hospital, authorities said, he asked about displaying a flag for the Islamic State group in his room. He said, according to court documents, that he felt good about what he had done.
___
Kang reported from Stow, Ohio. Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela and Wayne Parry in Paterson, New Jersey; Colleen Long in New York; Tamara Lush in Tampa, Florida; Michael Sisak in Philadelphia; and Jim Salter in St. Louis also contributed to this report.