An erratic U-Haul driver mauled down pedestrians and cyclers in a road rampage in Brooklyn, NYC neighborhoods on February 13. The driver, identified by his son as Weng Sor, was later found to be “off his meds” and hallucinating during the violent attacks.
The mayhem caused the death of an unidentified 44-year-old man and eight other people were injured in the neighborhood streets of Bay Ridge an Sunset Park on the west side of the borough of Brooklyn.
The police pursued a chase immediately after the first victim was hit at around 10:17 am. The driver continued out of control, hitting and dragging a cyclist, hitting a police officer, and was finally stopped and surrounded near the entrance to the Battery Tunnel in Brooklyn.
Officers from the New York Police Department arrested the driver and took him into custody.
After being caught, Sor said in a statement, that he “only ran over bad people – not good people.” He also said he was chasing an “invisible object” and was said to be hallucinating.
The incident lasted for almost an hour.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described the event as a “violent rampage,” and said that there was no indication of a terroristic intent.
The victims were all men between the ages of 30 to 66.
A witness, Katherine Aronova, said she saw the driver go through a red light, knock down a man on an electronic bike and drag him. When people tried to help the victim, they found him unconscious and his face was covered in blood.
The man who was killed was severely injured in the head when the driver hit him near Bay Ridge Parkway and 5th Avenue.
Sor’s son, 30-year-old Stephen Sor, said that his father was mentally ill and had recently moved to New York from Las Vegas, where he was convicted for several crimes, including stabbing his brother, for which he served over a year in a Nevada prison. In 2020, he was convicted for stabbing someone with a knife and was sentenced to a year in jail and served 10 months. Sor had also been arrested in early February of this year in South Carolina for reckless driving and was released on bail.
Speaking to reporters, Sor’s son said his father frequently chose to skip taking his medication, which resulted in him acting irrationally and violently.
The incident brought up memories for NYC residents of a 2017 terrorist attack by a New York driver who plowed through cyclists on a bike path, and killed eight people in Lower Manhattan.