NEW YORK — At a sentencing hearing for an Islamic extremist who prosecutors say deserves multiple life sentences, family members of the eight people who were killed and others who were hurt in a Halloween terror attack on a New York City bike path are set to speak on Wednesday.
Sayfullo Saipov will be sentenced in a federal court in Manhattan. In March, a jury decided that the Uzbek citizen who used to live in New Jersey should get a life term instead of the death penalty.
In a presentence submission, the prosecutors asked Judge Vernon S. Broderick to give the man eight consecutive life sentences (one for each death) and an extra 260 years in jail.
Prosecutors wrote, “Saipov is not ashamed to be a terrorist. He is a proud killer who doesn’t deserve any mercy and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Saipov got what he wanted after months of planning a brutal terrorist attack: the brutal killing of innocent people, the destruction of lives and families, and terror in New York City.
The only thing that stopped Saipov from doing more damage and killing was that he crashed into a school bus before he got to the Brooklyn Bridge,” they said.
Saipov, who was 35 at the time, did his attack on Halloween 2017 by driving a rented truck onto a busy bike path in lower Manhattan.
Five Argentinians, two Americans, and a woman from Belgium were killed, and 18 other people were badly hurt.
After coming out of his truck screaming “God is great” in Arabic and waving paintballs and pellet guns in the air, Saipov was shot by a police officer and taken into custody right away.
Prosecutors say he smiled as FBI agents questioned him in a hospital room after the attack and asked if they could hang an Islamic State group flag on the walls.
At his trial, his family members wanted him to get a life sentence because they wanted him to understand what he had done and say he was sorry. They said they wanted him to go back to being the quiet person they knew him to be before he became obsessed with the online propaganda of the terrorist group Islamic State.
Saipov moved officially to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010 and lived in Ohio and Florida before moving in with his family in Paterson, New Jersey. He used to drive long-haul trucks.
David Patton, his lawyer, told the jury that what he did was “senseless, horrible, and there’s no reason for it.”
Patton did not put a statement about his sentence in the public file, and he did not respond to an email on Tuesday.
Saipov, who didn’t say anything at his trial, will be able to say something at his sentence hearing.
