Sayfullo Saipov: NYC terror attack suspect 'consumed by hate and twisted ideology'

The rented Home Depot truck that Angel Batista spotted outside a nondescript apartment building on Genessee Avenue in Paterson last week seemed insignificant at the time.

After all, Batista had seen other vehicles, including vans and box trucks, in front of the building where Sayfullo Saipov lived with his wife and three young children.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors said Saipov rented a truck from the Home Depot store in Passaic on Oct. 22 to conduct a test run of the deadly terror attack he is accused of committing in lower Manhattan on Tuesday. Eight people were killed and a dozen were injured when Saipov allegedly drove a pickup he rented from the same Home Depot store onto a crowded bike path, in the deadliest attack in New York City since 9/11.

"It's kind of shocking," Batista said. "My neighbor. I work for Home Depot. It's crazy."

Prosecutors said the attack was the culmination of a year of careful planning. Saipov's neighbors and associates said it occurred after years of sudden changes in Saipov's life as he drifted deeper into a radical ideology of violence.

An army of federal investigators and reporters descended on Saipov's relatives and friends in the aftermath of the attack, tearing apart the few documents that sketch the outlines of the story of his life here in the United States.

What emerged was an image of an enterprising young man who arrived in the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010 eager to seize the opportunities of his new country. He married, started at least two businesses, had three children and lived a nomadic life across three states.

But something happened. His life took a dramatic and drastic turn. As of late Wednesday night, only one thing was certain: Saipov had become "consumed by hate and twisted ideology," said Joon H. Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Saipov recently moved from Florida to New Jersey, according to neighbors and public records. He lived a peripatetic life, driving trucks and racking up traffic tickets across the country while moving his young family to multiple addresses in New Jersey, Ohio and Florida, according to law enforcement officials and the scant public records that document his life.  

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He seemed to develop few close friendships while on the move, and people who encountered him in Paterson and the other places he has lived gave radically different descriptions of his behavior and character.

Federal law enforcement officials were aware of Saipov before Tuesday. Authorities said he had not been under investigation before the attack but that he had some connections to people who were subjects of a terrorist investigation.

Saipov, who had been in in custody at Bellevue Hospital in New York, appeared in federal court in a wheelchair on Wednesday afternoon and was ordered detained.

'He was really calm'

Soon after he moved to Paterson this summer, Saipov’s neighbors saw him as a calming presence. Carlos Batista, Angel’s brother, recalled riding a loud dirtbike up and down Genessee Avenue past Saipov, who was standing next to a friend.

Saipov’s friend grew angry about the noise, Batista said. Saipov did not. Instead, he gently asked Batista to quiet down the racket because his children were asleep inside his apartment.

“His friend got an attitude. So I gave him one back. But him, he's an all right guy,” Batista said of Saipov. “He's not a bad guy. Not that I know of, until this happened."

On Tuesday afternoon Saipov drove his family minivan to the Home Depot in Passaic, where he rented the pickup truck, according to law enforcement officials. From there, they said, he drove north to the George Washington Bridge and then south to Houston Street, turning onto a path reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. Then he sped up, striking dozens of people, including a New Milford native and five tourists from Argentina who were visiting New York to celebrate their 30th high school reunion.  

“This is a very painful day in our city,’’ New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “This was an act of terror, a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians.”

Saipov’s life in America started on a radically different track. When he arrived in the United States with a green card in 2010, he landed in Symmes Township, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, as a young man focused on creating a prosperous life in his new home.

“He was really calm,” Dilnoza Abdusamatova, who was a teenager when Saipov stayed for two weeks at her parents’ townhouse, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. “He always used to work. He wouldn’t go to parties or anything. He only used to come home and rest and go back to work.”

His work was trucking, a common career choice among young Uzbeki men hoping to build prosperous lives in America, said Bek Aripov, owner of Uzbek Transport Express, LLC, a trucking company based near Abdusamatova’s Ohio home, and which once employed Abdusamatova’s parents.

“I know that family. I was shocked” by the turn in Saipov’s live, Aripov said. “It’s very common for people from Uzbekistan to come here and start out driving trucks. They can come here, work hard, and make $100,000 a year, which is good money.”

Life as a trucker has its perils, however. Between 2011 and 2015, Saipov racked up at least five traffic tickets in three states, one each in Maryland and Iowa, and two in different counties in Missouri, one of which issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to appear in court.

The tickets cost Saipov his insurance on his truck, which caused companies to stop hiring him, Mirrakhmat Muminov, a fellow truck driver who became friends with Saipov in Ohio, told The Associated Press. And after Saipov moved to New Jersey, his truck’s engine blew up, The AP reported.

The end of Saipov’s trucking career “probably hurt him more than anything,” said Muminov, who described Saipov as “not happy with his life” and getting into arguments with his friends and family.

Saipov also worked as a driver for Uber while he lived in New Jersey, law enforcement officials said. He drove more than 1,400 Uber trips, the company said in a statement.

Associates see a darker side

Saipov’s personal life appeared to be similarly chaotic. From Cincinnati he moved across the country, public documents show, bouncing to apartments in Stow, Ohio, near Akron, before moving to two different addresses in Tampa, Florida, and also moving back and forth to Paterson.

In 2015, he applied for a driver’s license in Florida. On his application, obtained from the state's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, he listed his home address as an apartment in Florida, a phone number from the Cincinnati area and a previous driver’s license number from Ohio, where had been living near Akron.

When he landed in Paterson, Saipov’s vehicle still had license plates from Florida, his neighbors said, and he made regular trips back to Florida.

Through all these changes, Saipov could be cheerful. Kobiljon Matkarov, an Ohio resident and truck driver who was friends with Saipov on Facebook, told The Tampa Bay Times that his children enjoyed playing with Saipov when the two men lived close to each other in Florida. Matkarov and Saipov passed the time making small talk about their work and families, Matkarov said.

“He’s very friendly,” he told the newspaper. “He’s a very, very nice guy.”

Others saw a darker side of Saipov.

A man who once worked as a dispatcher for one of Saipov’s trucking companies, and who led a mosque in Tampa that Saipov attended, said in an interview with The New York Times that Saipov was moody. He was often easygoing, said the man, who asked to be identified only as Abdula.

But Saipov also had a short fuse, Abdula said. He had strong feelings about problems facing Muslims in America, Abdula told the newspaper, even though his own religious observance focused less on the tenets of the religion itself and more on its outward displays, such as his beard.

“I used to tell him, ‘Hey, you are too much emotional,’ ” Abdula said. “‘Read books more. Learn your religion first,’ He did not learn religion properly.”

Despite Saipov's outbursts, Abdula said, he never worried about his friend turning to violence.

“I didn’t hear him talking about killing people,” Abdula said.

Staff Writer Keldy Ortiz contributed to this article, which includes material from The Associated Press.

Email: maag@northjersey.com