One Dead and twenty two Injured as Car Rams Into Pedestrians in Times Square
The Fresh York Times
May Legal, 2017
All of a sudden, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day.
And it was moving swift.
By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, twenty two other people were injured and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of fright and carnage. The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.
“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street and eyed the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”
Unfolding in one of the city’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the gig instantly raised the specter of terrorism. An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in two thousand ten remains a potent memory for many, and latest terrorist attacks overseas have shown the harm that vehicles can do when used as weapons.
Interactive Feature | Path of the Car
The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a Navy veteran from the Bronx, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, said officials, moving quickly to assuage fears of terrorism.
“Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage.
Mr. Rojas appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he mowed down the crowds, according to several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. Under questioning by investigators, he rambled and talked about various things, making some statements suggesting that he might have dreamed to provoke the police into killing him, the officials said.
It was around noon when Mr. Rojas swerved onto a curb near 42nd Street and then accelerated north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, which runs one way, southbound — crashing into people for block after block.
Alyssa Elsman, Legal, of Portage, Mich., was killed in the havoc, officials said. Her 13-year-old sister was injured.
A security guard at a building at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue said he had observed through the lobby windows as the Honda sped past and drove over a woman.
“She just hit the floor and he went over her,” said the guard, who did not give his name.
Other witnesses described their horror at observing horrified bystanders scramble for safety.
“It was going at a swift rate of speed and to me it looked like it was attempting to hit as many people as possible,” said Annie Donahey, 24, who had just left work. “People were attempting to hop out of the way.”
The car raced on, crossing 45th Street before smashing into barriers in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The driver attempted to escape, but he was quickly surrounded.
“He began attempting to run away,” said Asa Lowe, 42, who had been walking on Seventh Avenue. “Traffic cops grabbed him. Regular citizens grabbed him. We became the city we need to be today.”
Richard Rojas was taken into custody after the scene.
Rodrigo Campos / Reuters
The wrecked Honda stayed where it was through the day, as if in a disaster-movie still, amid the constant looping of Times Square’s electronic billboards and advertisements. The car’s right-side wheels suspended in the air as smoke rose from under its crumpled front spandex hood. The trunk was popped open, exposing piles of detritus. The rear bumper was ripped off and lounging in the middle of the street a few blocks away.
On a nearby pedestrian plaza, there was one puny cluster of people who were not emergency medical workers: a duo with two youthful children. The man held a boy in his arms. The woman held the forearm of a chick in a flowing sun dress. It was not clear if they were connected to any of the victims. They walked around leisurely, as if in a daze.
Mr. Rojas suggested alternate explanations for the gig to investigators, according to the law enforcement officials, who said that investigators had not come to any instantaneous conclusions.
“He’s just rambling and telling crazy stuff,” said one of officials, adding that Mr. Rojas had talked of hearing voices and having hallucinations. “He attempted to fight the police.”
Two officials said Mr. Rojas had tested negative for alcohol; one official said that preliminary tests indicated that he was under the influence of PCP, a mood-altering drug.
Mr. Rojas eventually asked for a lawyer, ending the questioning, another official said.
Another witness, Magdy Tawfik, a hot dog vendor who was working near the corner of 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, said he had seen the car hit three people around him.
“One of the women who was hit must have been about 20,” Mr. Tawfik said. “She looked like my daughter. I couldn’t stop blubbering. She was so youthfull.”
He recounted the gig about a half-hour after it ended, the corner still frantic scene of emergency workers, police officers in tactical gear and caution gauze. A youthful woman sat on a chair nearby and captured at her chest as bystanders suggested her water.
“The car sped through here, it was moving so swift, and it crushed all these people,” he said. “It ran into all these people and everyone was running and screaming.”
Mr. White, the clothing vendor, stood next to a woman who was lounging on her back on a sidewalk and surrounded by paramedics.
“It hit her,” Mr. White said of the car, pointing to the woman, who was groaning in agony. “And it hit a duo of other people. Then the next thing I know it went straight down to 45th. It just was doing like about one hundred miles per hour and then the car crashed.”
Four other people were critically injured after sustaining numerous fractures and traumas, Daniel P. Nigro, the fire commissioner said. They were taken to two hospitals. Three others were taken to hospitals in serious condition. Others sustained less serious injuries.
Mr. Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital for an evaluation before being discharged into police custody. He was charged late Thursday with one count of murder, twenty counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
He has a record of aggressive behavior. On May 11, he was arrested and charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon for menacing a man who had come to his apartment on Walton Avenue to notarize documents. A criminal complaint said he had packaged a forearm around the man’s neck, raised a knife and said, “You’re attempting to steal my identity.”
On May 12, he pleaded guilty to harassment and received a conditional discharge.
In April 2015, Mr. Rojas was arrested in Manhattan for driving while intoxicated. A police officer described him in a criminal complaint as having slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on his breath. He pleaded guilty to an infraction and was sentenced to finish a drunken driving program, 90-day license suspension and a $500 fine. He was also arrested for driving under the influence in Queens in 2008, and pleaded guilty to a disturbance.
He served in the Navy from July two thousand eleven to May 2014, according to naval records. Naval officials would not characterize the precise circumstances of his departure, but a friend, Hansel Guerrero, said Mr. Rojas had told him that he had been dishonorably discharged.
In September 2012, while stationed at a naval base in Jacksonville, Fla., he was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer after he refused to pay a taxi fare and strike up the cabdriver, according to records.
He began to express conspiratorial thoughts about the government when he returned to Fresh York after being discharged from the Navy, said Mr. Guerrero, 26.
Mr. Guerrero, who grew up with Mr. Rojas in the Bronx, said that his friend was not the same person he was when he joined the Navy. Before enlisting, Mr. Guerrero said, the two studs would string up out together and work on cars. By the time he came home, he had become paranoid.
“He thought that everybody had control over him,” Mr. Guerrero said. “They were attempting to control his life and things he desired to do in life.”
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a vendor who witnessed a car driving on the sidewalk in Times Square. He is Sharief White, not Sharif.
Reporting was contributed by Rukmini Callimachi, Jacey Fortin, Christine Hauser, Christopher Mele, James C. McKinley Jr., Benjamin Mueller, Andy Newman, Emily Palmer, William K. Rashbaum, Ashley Southall and Daniel Victor. Jack Begg and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
One Dead and twenty two Injured as Car Rams Into Pedestrians in Times Square
The Fresh York Times
May Legal, 2017
All of a sudden, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day.
And it was moving prompt.
By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, twenty two other people were injured and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of funk and carnage. The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.
“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street and eyed the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”
Unfolding in one of the city’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the gig instantly raised the specter of terrorism. An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in two thousand ten remains a potent memory for many, and latest terrorist attacks overseas have shown the harm that vehicles can do when used as weapons.
Interactive Feature | Path of the Car
The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a Navy veteran from the Bronx, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, said officials, moving quickly to assuage fears of terrorism.
“Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage.
Mr. Rojas appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he mowed down the crowds, according to several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. Under questioning by investigators, he rambled and talked about various things, making some statements suggesting that he might have dreamed to provoke the police into killing him, the officials said.
It was around noon when Mr. Rojas swerved onto a curb near 42nd Street and then accelerated north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, which runs one way, southbound — crashing into people for block after block.
Alyssa Elsman, Legitimate, of Portage, Mich., was killed in the havoc, officials said. Her 13-year-old sister was injured.
A security guard at a building at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue said he had observed through the lobby windows as the Honda sped past and drove over a woman.
“She just hit the floor and he went over her,” said the guard, who did not give his name.
Other witnesses described their horror at observing horrified bystanders scramble for safety.
“It was going at a rapid rate of speed and to me it looked like it was attempting to hit as many people as possible,” said Annie Donahey, 24, who had just left work. “People were attempting to leap out of the way.”
The car raced on, crossing 45th Street before smashing into barriers in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The driver attempted to escape, but he was quickly surrounded.
“He commenced attempting to run away,” said Asa Lowe, 42, who had been walking on Seventh Avenue. “Traffic cops grabbed him. Regular citizens grabbed him. We became the city we need to be today.”
Richard Rojas was taken into custody after the scene.
Rodrigo Campos / Reuters
The wrecked Honda stayed where it was through the day, as if in a disaster-movie still, amid the constant looping of Times Square’s electronic billboards and advertisements. The car’s right-side wheels dangled in the air as smoke rose from under its crumpled front spandex hood. The trunk was popped open, exposing piles of detritus. The rear bumper was ripped off and lounging in the middle of the street a few blocks away.
On a nearby pedestrian plaza, there was one puny cluster of people who were not emergency medical workers: a duo with two youthful children. The man held a boy in his arms. The woman held the mitt of a dame in a flowing sun dress. It was not clear if they were connected to any of the victims. They walked around leisurely, as if in a daze.
Mr. Rojas suggested alternate explanations for the gig to investigators, according to the law enforcement officials, who said that investigators had not come to any instantaneous conclusions.
“He’s just rambling and telling crazy stuff,” said one of officials, adding that Mr. Rojas had talked of hearing voices and having hallucinations. “He attempted to fight the police.”
Two officials said Mr. Rojas had tested negative for alcohol; one official said that preliminary tests indicated that he was under the influence of PCP, a mood-altering drug.
Mr. Rojas eventually asked for a lawyer, ending the questioning, another official said.
Another witness, Magdy Tawfik, a hot dog vendor who was working near the corner of 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, said he had seen the car hit three people around him.
“One of the ladies who was hit must have been about 20,” Mr. Tawfik said. “She looked like my daughter. I couldn’t stop blubbering. She was so youthfull.”
He recounted the gig about a half-hour after it ended, the corner still frantic scene of emergency workers, police officers in tactical gear and caution gauze. A youthful woman sat on a chair nearby and captured at her chest as bystanders suggested her water.
“The car sped through here, it was moving so swift, and it crushed all these people,” he said. “It ran into all these people and everyone was running and screaming.”
Mr. White, the clothing vendor, stood next to a woman who was lounging on her back on a sidewalk and surrounded by paramedics.
“It hit her,” Mr. White said of the car, pointing to the woman, who was bellowing in agony. “And it hit a duo of other people. Then the next thing I know it went straight down to 45th. It just was doing like about one hundred miles per hour and then the car crashed.”
Four other people were critically injured after sustaining numerous fractures and traumas, Daniel P. Nigro, the fire commissioner said. They were taken to two hospitals. Three others were taken to hospitals in serious condition. Others sustained less serious injuries.
Mr. Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital for an evaluation before being discharged into police custody. He was charged late Thursday with one count of murder, twenty counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
He has a record of aggressive behavior. On May 11, he was arrested and charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon for menacing a man who had come to his apartment on Walton Avenue to notarize documents. A criminal complaint said he had packaged a arm around the man’s neck, raised a knife and said, “You’re attempting to steal my identity.”
On May 12, he pleaded guilty to harassment and received a conditional discharge.
In April 2015, Mr. Rojas was arrested in Manhattan for driving while intoxicated. A police officer described him in a criminal complaint as having slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on his breath. He pleaded guilty to an infraction and was sentenced to accomplish a drunken driving program, 90-day license suspension and a $500 fine. He was also arrested for driving under the influence in Queens in 2008, and pleaded guilty to a disturbance.
He served in the Navy from July two thousand eleven to May 2014, according to naval records. Naval officials would not characterize the precise circumstances of his departure, but a friend, Hansel Guerrero, said Mr. Rojas had told him that he had been dishonorably discharged.
In September 2012, while stationed at a naval base in Jacksonville, Fla., he was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer after he refused to pay a taxi fare and hammer up the cabdriver, according to records.
He began to express conspiratorial thoughts about the government when he returned to Fresh York after being discharged from the Navy, said Mr. Guerrero, 26.
Mr. Guerrero, who grew up with Mr. Rojas in the Bronx, said that his friend was not the same person he was when he joined the Navy. Before enlisting, Mr. Guerrero said, the two guys would suspend out together and work on cars. By the time he came home, he had become paranoid.
“He thought that everybody had control over him,” Mr. Guerrero said. “They were attempting to control his life and things he dreamed to do in life.”
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a vendor who witnessed a car driving on the sidewalk in Times Square. He is Sharief White, not Sharif.
Reporting was contributed by Rukmini Callimachi, Jacey Fortin, Christine Hauser, Christopher Mele, James C. McKinley Jr., Benjamin Mueller, Andy Newman, Emily Palmer, William K. Rashbaum, Ashley Southall and Daniel Victor. Jack Begg and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
One Dead and twenty two Injured as Car Rams Into Pedestrians in Times Square
The Fresh York Times
May Eighteen, 2017
Abruptly, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day.
And it was moving rapid.
By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, twenty two other people were injured and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of scare and carnage. The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.
“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street and witnessed the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”
Unfolding in one of the city’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the scene instantly raised the specter of terrorism. An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in two thousand ten remains a potent memory for many, and latest terrorist attacks overseas have shown the harm that vehicles can do when used as weapons.
Interactive Feature | Path of the Car
The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a Navy veteran from the Bronx, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, said officials, moving quickly to assuage fears of terrorism.
“Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage.
Mr. Rojas appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he mowed down the crowds, according to several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. Under questioning by investigators, he rambled and talked about various things, making some statements suggesting that he might have desired to provoke the police into killing him, the officials said.
It was around noon when Mr. Rojas swerved onto a curb near 42nd Street and then accelerated north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, which runs one way, southbound — crashing into people for block after block.
Alyssa Elsman, Legal, of Portage, Mich., was killed in the havoc, officials said. Her 13-year-old sister was injured.
A security guard at a building at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue said he had observed through the lobby windows as the Honda sped past and drove over a woman.
“She just hit the floor and he went over her,” said the guard, who did not give his name.
Other witnesses described their horror at eyeing appalled bystanders scramble for safety.
“It was going at a swift rate of speed and to me it looked like it was attempting to hit as many people as possible,” said Annie Donahey, 24, who had just left work. “People were attempting to hop out of the way.”
The car raced on, crossing 45th Street before smashing into barriers in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The driver attempted to escape, but he was quickly surrounded.
“He commenced attempting to run away,” said Asa Lowe, 42, who had been walking on Seventh Avenue. “Traffic cops grabbed him. Regular citizens grabbed him. We became the city we need to be today.”
Richard Rojas was taken into custody after the gig.
Rodrigo Campos / Reuters
The wrecked Honda stayed where it was through the day, as if in a disaster-movie still, amid the constant looping of Times Square’s electronic billboards and advertisements. The car’s right-side wheels draped in the air as smoke rose from under its crumpled front bondage mask. The trunk was popped open, exposing piles of detritus. The rear bumper was ripped off and lounging in the middle of the street a few blocks away.
On a nearby pedestrian plaza, there was one petite cluster of people who were not emergency medical workers: a duo with two youthfull children. The man held a boy in his arms. The woman held the mitt of a damsel in a flowing sun dress. It was not clear if they were connected to any of the victims. They walked around leisurely, as if in a daze.
Mr. Rojas suggested alternate explanations for the scene to investigators, according to the law enforcement officials, who said that investigators had not come to any instantaneous conclusions.
“He’s just rambling and telling crazy stuff,” said one of officials, adding that Mr. Rojas had talked of hearing voices and having hallucinations. “He attempted to fight the police.”
Two officials said Mr. Rojas had tested negative for alcohol; one official said that preliminary tests indicated that he was under the influence of PCP, a mood-altering drug.
Mr. Rojas eventually asked for a lawyer, ending the questioning, another official said.
Another witness, Magdy Tawfik, a hot dog vendor who was working near the corner of 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, said he had seen the car hit three people around him.
“One of the women who was hit must have been about 20,” Mr. Tawfik said. “She looked like my daughter. I couldn’t stop blubbering. She was so youthfull.”
He recounted the scene about a half-hour after it ended, the corner still frantic scene of emergency workers, police officers in tactical gear and caution gauze. A youthful woman sat on a chair nearby and gripped at her chest as bystanders suggested her water.
“The car sped through here, it was moving so rapid, and it crushed all these people,” he said. “It ran into all these people and everyone was running and screaming.”
Mr. White, the clothing vendor, stood next to a woman who was lounging on her back on a sidewalk and surrounded by paramedics.
“It hit her,” Mr. White said of the car, pointing to the woman, who was screaming in ache. “And it hit a duo of other people. Then the next thing I know it went straight down to 45th. It just was doing like about one hundred miles per hour and then the car crashed.”
Four other people were critically injured after sustaining numerous fractures and traumas, Daniel P. Nigro, the fire commissioner said. They were taken to two hospitals. Three others were taken to hospitals in serious condition. Others sustained less serious injuries.
Mr. Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital for an evaluation before being discharged into police custody. He was charged late Thursday with one count of murder, twenty counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
He has a record of aggressive behavior. On May 11, he was arrested and charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon for menacing a man who had come to his apartment on Walton Avenue to notarize documents. A criminal complaint said he had packaged a palm around the man’s neck, raised a knife and said, “You’re attempting to steal my identity.”
On May 12, he pleaded guilty to harassment and received a conditional discharge.
In April 2015, Mr. Rojas was arrested in Manhattan for driving while intoxicated. A police officer described him in a criminal complaint as having slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on his breath. He pleaded guilty to an infraction and was sentenced to accomplish a drunken driving program, 90-day license suspension and a $500 fine. He was also arrested for driving under the influence in Queens in 2008, and pleaded guilty to a disturbance.
He served in the Navy from July two thousand eleven to May 2014, according to naval records. Naval officials would not characterize the precise circumstances of his departure, but a friend, Hansel Guerrero, said Mr. Rojas had told him that he had been dishonorably discharged.
In September 2012, while stationed at a naval base in Jacksonville, Fla., he was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer after he refused to pay a taxi fare and hit up the cabdriver, according to records.
He began to express conspiratorial thoughts about the government when he returned to Fresh York after being discharged from the Navy, said Mr. Guerrero, 26.
Mr. Guerrero, who grew up with Mr. Rojas in the Bronx, said that his friend was not the same person he was when he joined the Navy. Before enlisting, Mr. Guerrero said, the two fellows would dangle out together and work on cars. By the time he came home, he had become paranoid.
“He thought that everybody had control over him,” Mr. Guerrero said. “They were attempting to control his life and things he desired to do in life.”
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a vendor who witnessed a car driving on the sidewalk in Times Square. He is Sharief White, not Sharif.
Reporting was contributed by Rukmini Callimachi, Jacey Fortin, Christine Hauser, Christopher Mele, James C. McKinley Jr., Benjamin Mueller, Andy Newman, Emily Palmer, William K. Rashbaum, Ashley Southall and Daniel Victor. Jack Begg and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
One Dead and twenty two Injured as Car Rams Into Pedestrians in Times Square
The Fresh York Times
May Eighteen, 2017
Abruptly, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day.
And it was moving rapid.
By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, twenty two other people were injured and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of scare and carnage. The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.
“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street and witnessed the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”
Unfolding in one of the city’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the scene instantly raised the specter of terrorism. An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in two thousand ten remains a potent memory for many, and latest terrorist attacks overseas have shown the harm that vehicles can do when used as weapons.
Interactive Feature | Path of the Car
The driver of the Honda, Richard Rojas, 26, a Navy veteran from the Bronx, had a history of arrests for drunken driving, said officials, moving quickly to assuage fears of terrorism.
“Based on information we have at this moment, there is no indication that this was an act of terrorism,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters at a news conference near the scene of the rampage.
Mr. Rojas appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he mowed down the crowds, according to several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. Under questioning by investigators, he rambled and talked about various things, making some statements suggesting that he might have dreamed to provoke the police into killing him, the officials said.
It was around noon when Mr. Rojas swerved onto a curb near 42nd Street and then accelerated north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, which runs one way, southbound — crashing into people for block after block.
Alyssa Elsman, Legitimate, of Portage, Mich., was killed in the havoc, officials said. Her 13-year-old sister was injured.
A security guard at a building at 44th Street and Seventh Avenue said he had observed through the lobby windows as the Honda sped past and drove over a woman.
“She just hit the floor and he went over her,” said the guard, who did not give his name.
Other witnesses described their horror at observing horrified bystanders scramble for safety.
“It was going at a rapid rate of speed and to me it looked like it was attempting to hit as many people as possible,” said Annie Donahey, 24, who had just left work. “People were attempting to hop out of the way.”
The car raced on, crossing 45th Street before smashing into barriers in front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel. The driver attempted to escape, but he was quickly surrounded.
“He commenced attempting to run away,” said Asa Lowe, 42, who had been walking on Seventh Avenue. “Traffic cops grabbed him. Regular citizens grabbed him. We became the city we need to be today.”
Richard Rojas was taken into custody after the gig.
Rodrigo Campos / Reuters
The wrecked Honda stayed where it was through the day, as if in a disaster-movie still, amid the constant looping of Times Square’s electronic billboards and advertisements. The car’s right-side wheels dangled in the air as smoke rose from under its crumpled front rubber hood. The trunk was popped open, exposing piles of detritus. The rear bumper was ripped off and lounging in the middle of the street a few blocks away.
On a nearby pedestrian plaza, there was one puny cluster of people who were not emergency medical workers: a duo with two youthfull children. The man held a boy in his arms. The woman held the forearm of a dame in a flowing sun dress. It was not clear if they were connected to any of the victims. They walked around leisurely, as if in a daze.
Mr. Rojas suggested alternate explanations for the gig to investigators, according to the law enforcement officials, who said that investigators had not come to any instant conclusions.
“He’s just rambling and telling crazy stuff,” said one of officials, adding that Mr. Rojas had talked of hearing voices and having hallucinations. “He attempted to fight the police.”
Two officials said Mr. Rojas had tested negative for alcohol; one official said that preliminary tests indicated that he was under the influence of PCP, a mood-altering drug.
Mr. Rojas eventually asked for a lawyer, ending the questioning, another official said.
Another witness, Magdy Tawfik, a hot dog vendor who was working near the corner of 44th Street and Seventh Avenue, said he had seen the car hit three people around him.
“One of the chicks who was hit must have been about 20,” Mr. Tawfik said. “She looked like my daughter. I couldn’t stop weeping. She was so youthful.”
He recounted the scene about a half-hour after it ended, the corner still frantic scene of emergency workers, police officers in tactical gear and caution gauze. A youthfull woman sat on a chair nearby and seized at her chest as bystanders suggested her water.
“The car sped through here, it was moving so quick, and it crushed all these people,” he said. “It ran into all these people and everyone was running and screaming.”
Mr. White, the clothing vendor, stood next to a woman who was lounging on her back on a sidewalk and surrounded by paramedics.
“It hit her,” Mr. White said of the car, pointing to the woman, who was bellowing in anguish. “And it hit a duo of other people. Then the next thing I know it went straight down to 45th. It just was doing like about one hundred miles per hour and then the car crashed.”
Four other people were critically injured after sustaining numerous fractures and traumas, Daniel P. Nigro, the fire commissioner said. They were taken to two hospitals. Three others were taken to hospitals in serious condition. Others sustained less serious injuries.
Mr. Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital for an evaluation before being discharged into police custody. He was charged late Thursday with one count of murder, twenty counts of attempted murder and five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
He has a record of aggressive behavior. On May 11, he was arrested and charged with menacing and criminal possession of a weapon for menacing a man who had come to his apartment on Walton Avenue to notarize documents. A criminal complaint said he had packaged a forearm around the man’s neck, raised a knife and said, “You’re attempting to steal my identity.”
On May 12, he pleaded guilty to harassment and received a conditional discharge.
In April 2015, Mr. Rojas was arrested in Manhattan for driving while intoxicated. A police officer described him in a criminal complaint as having slurred speech, bloodshot eyes and the smell of alcohol on his breath. He pleaded guilty to an infraction and was sentenced to finish a drunken driving program, 90-day license suspension and a $500 fine. He was also arrested for driving under the influence in Queens in 2008, and pleaded guilty to a disturbance.
He served in the Navy from July two thousand eleven to May 2014, according to naval records. Naval officials would not characterize the precise circumstances of his departure, but a friend, Hansel Guerrero, said Mr. Rojas had told him that he had been dishonorably discharged.
In September 2012, while stationed at a naval base in Jacksonville, Fla., he was arrested and charged with battery and resisting an officer after he refused to pay a taxi fare and hit up the cabdriver, according to records.
He began to express conspiratorial thoughts about the government when he returned to Fresh York after being discharged from the Navy, said Mr. Guerrero, 26.
Mr. Guerrero, who grew up with Mr. Rojas in the Bronx, said that his friend was not the same person he was when he joined the Navy. Before enlisting, Mr. Guerrero said, the two dudes would drape out together and work on cars. By the time he came home, he had become paranoid.
“He thought that everybody had control over him,” Mr. Guerrero said. “They were attempting to control his life and things he dreamed to do in life.”
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a vendor who witnessed a car driving on the sidewalk in Times Square. He is Sharief White, not Sharif.
Reporting was contributed by Rukmini Callimachi, Jacey Fortin, Christine Hauser, Christopher Mele, James C. McKinley Jr., Benjamin Mueller, Andy Newman, Emily Palmer, William K. Rashbaum, Ashley Southall and Daniel Victor. Jack Begg and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.