U-Haul driver in deadly NYC ‘rampage’ had violent history in Las Vegas

A man who got behind the wheel of a U-Haul truck and veered onto sidewalks in New York City, killing one and injuring seven others, was a former Las Vegas resident who was arrested several times for stabbing people including his brother and who had undergone evaluations for mental health issues in Nevada.

Weng Sor, 62, was identified to The Associated Press by his son Stephen Sor, 30, who lives in New York City and who said his father has a history of mental health issues.

Stephen Sor also said his father had been living in Las Vegas until recently. Clark County court records show Sor, 62, has multiple arrests and convictions for several violent acts.

The New York rampage left a 44-year-old man dead, a law enforcement speaking on condition of anonymity official told the AP.

The driver, identified by his son as Sor, was arrested and taken to a police station.

“Very frequently he’ll choose to skip out on his medications and do something like this,” Stephen Sor said in an interview with AP outside his Brooklyn home. “This isn’t the first time he’s been arrested. It’s not the first time he’s gone to jail.”

The “violent rampage,” as New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described it, played out over an hour as the truck went on a three-mile reign of terror through Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood, hitting people along the way as police chased it.

Sewell said there was no evidence of “terrorism involvement.”

The truck, rented by Sor in West Palm Beach, Florida on Feb. 1, was stopped near the entrance to a tunnel leading from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Violent history in Nevada

In the years prior to Monday’s fatal attack, Weng Sor racked up several arrests for violent incidents here in Nevada.

According to the AP, Weng Sor stabbed his brother in Las Vegas in 2015 and served about 17 months in a Nevada prison, according to court and prison records.

According to a Metropolitan Police Department arrest report, Weng Sor and his brother were at their mother’s house in Las Vegas when they got into an argument, possibly about a pocket knife that Sor had left at the home. The argument escalated to violence when Sor hit his brother, either with his fist or some other unknown object, cutting his brother above his ear. Sor then stabbed his brother in the left side.

When their mom, who had been out checking the mail, returned, she saw Sor holding the knife and her other son bleeding profusely, the report stated.

In 2020, Sor pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to commit battery after a criminal complaint said he stabbed a person in the arm and another in the chest and/or stomach with a knife, according to court records. He was sentenced to 364 days in county jail, with about 10 months of time already served.

Before pleading guilty in that case, the AP reported, Sor underwent several months of evaluations at state psychiatric facilities until he was found competent to face charges, court records show.

The records don’t list a possible diagnosis. They say that Sor was placed on medications.

In an earlier Nevada case, the AP reported, Sor was ordered to undergo counseling and perform community service after pleading guilty to misdemeanor battery in 2005. The judge in the case noted that Sor was moving to New York and ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation once he was there.

The destruction shattered the late-morning routine and immediately evoked memories of other vehicle assaults on bikers and pedestrians in New York, including a terrorist’s deadly 2017 attack that killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path and a disturbed motorist’s rampage through Times Square the same year that killed one and injured 20.

The first report of a truck crashing into pedestrians and cyclists came in at 10:30 a.m., police said, and other reports followed as the vehicle moved through a busy section of Brooklyn, just north of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge along New York Harbor.

The neighborhood, a melting pot of immigrants from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, is known as the setting of “Saturday Night Fever,” and parts of TV’s “Blue Bloods.” Each fall, it hosts a leg of the New York City Marathon.

‘His face was covered with blood’

Katherine Aronova said she saw the U-Haul run a red light, hit a delivery worker on an e-bike in the middle of the road and drag him a short distance.

“His face was covered with blood. He was unconscious,” and his shoes were scattered on the sidewalk, Aronova told AP. “The electric bicycle was destroyed completely.”

A security camera captured the truck clipping a scooter, then swerving onto a sidewalk and nearly plowing into a pedestrian, who dived to safety just in time. A police patrol car then followed the truck down the sidewalk at high speed.

“I was in shock and didn’t know what was happening until I saw the police patrol was chasing it,” a witness, Andrea Vasquez, said in Spanish, to the AP.

“Thank God that man saved himself,” she added of the person who narrowly escaped.

A police officer responding to the incident was among the injured.

Aerial video from news helicopters showed the truck on a sidewalk after the chase ended, its path blocked by a police cruiser. Authorities examined the vehicle to make sure it didn’t contain explosives.

Sor was due to return the truck in Florida on March 3, U-Haul spokesperson Jeff Lockridge said. He provided a valid driver’s license and paid for a 30-day rental in advance. U-Haul had no record of Sor previously renting from the company, Lockridge said.

Stephen Sor said he was surprised when Weng Sor showed up in Brooklyn in the middle of the night about a week ago. He said they didn’t speak often and described their relationship as “rocky.”

“I try to just distance, as long as he leaves us alone,” Stephen Sor said.

Las Vegas Review-Journal staff writer Brett Clarkson contributed to this report. Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrettClarkson_ on Twitter.