A driver of a U-Haul truck created a rampage and tragedy on the streets of the Brooklyn, New York City neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park on February 13, knocking down cyclists, pedestrians, and scooter drivers. The mayhem caused the death of one man and eight other people were injured before police caught up with the suspect’s vehicle after a pursuit throughout the west side of Brooklyn.

Officers from the New York Police Department arrested the driver and took him into custody. He was identified by his son as 62-year-old Weng Sor.

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. 

During the approximately 48 minutes of Sor’s crazy behavior, he plowed through several people at several locations while police were chasing him.

Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described the event as a “violent rampage,” and said that there was no apparent evidence of terroristic intent.

Nine men were victims, all between the ages of 30 to 66, including a police officer. 

The chaos started when the U-Haul driver struck a man at around 10:17 am. Other victims continued to be randomly hit as the vehicle sped through the borough.

A witness, Katherine Aronova, said she saw the driver go through a red light, hit 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.

Police have not publicly identified the man who died, only saying he was a 44-year-old man. They said that he was severely injured in the head when the truck hit him near Bay Ridge Parkway and 5th Avenue.

The police pursuit finally ended when a cop’s vehicle cut the U-Haul vehicle off and pushed it against a building near the Battery Tunnel entrance leading to Manhattan, which was more than three miles from where the chase began. Several police cars surrounded the U-Haul. 

Sor’s son, 30-year-old Stephen Sor, stated 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 was also 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 reminded people 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.