West Side Bike Path Terrorist Sentenced to 10 life sentences plus another 260 years
The Islamic terrorist Sayfullo Saipov who killed eight people and seriously injured 18 others when he drove a rental van onto the West Side bike path was finally sentenced on May 17th. some five and a half years after the attacks.
| 17 May 2023 | 05:10
An Islamic terrorist who killed eight people by driving a rental truck onto a West Side bike path in 2017 will die in prison after he was convicted to ten life sentences plus another 260 years. Photo: flickr
Islamic terrorist Sayfullo Saipov sentenced on May 17 for attacks that killed eight people. Photo: Department of Homeland Security
An Islamic terrorist was sentenced to ten life sentences and another 260 years in prison for driving a rental truck down the West Side Bike path on Halloween in 2017, killing eight people and injuring 18 others.
Sayfullo Saipov spoke in Uzbek for an hour at the sentencing and remained unrepentant despite hearing from 20 victims of his at sentencing including Marion Van Reeth, who lost both legs of her legs in the attack and relatives of victims who were killed by him.
He had arrived in the United States in 2010. Speaking in Uzbek, he said the tears of victims and family members were small compared to the blood and tears suffered by those in the Islamic faith, according to the Associated Press
“The conduct in this case is among the worst if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, reportedly said in condemning Saipov for his unrepentant nature. “You did not and you do not care about their pain and their suffering that is the direct result of your callous and cowardly actions.”
Family members of the Uzbekistan citizen who had lived in New Jersey disowned him and condemned his actions prior to the sentencing.
He had been found guilty in January of the Oct. 31, 2017 terrorist attack. Although the trial was held in a court in New York, which does not have capitol punishment, the death sentence was a possibility because it was a federal trial where murder could still carry a death sentence.
J.P. Patrick, who was the jury foreman told the New York Times after the sentencing hearing that the jury initially was split with eight jurors in favor of the death sentence and four in favor of life imprisonment. Ultimately, he said, the jurors deadlocked at 7-to-5 in favor of a life sentence.
Although Saipov said he intended to kill Americans, six of the eight killed were foreign tourists.
Five were from Argentina, in New York celebrating a high school graduation. Argentina’s Foreign Affairs Ministry identified them as Hernán Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damián Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi.
The only Americans who died in the attack were Nicholas Cleves, 23, from New York, and Darren Drake, 32, from New Milford, NJ.
Also killed was Ann-Laure Decadt, a 31-year-old Belgian woman and monther of two young children.