NEW YORK _ The suspect in the New York attack that killed eight people on Halloween appeared to follow Islamic State social media instructions on terrorism and left behind handwritten notes saying the extremist group would endure forever, officials said Wednesday.
Sayfullo Saipov, 29, is suspected of staging the rental truck attack Tuesday afternoon down a riverfront bike path near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan in the name of Islamic State, authorities said.
Saipov shouted "God is great" in Arabic and had multiple knives in addition to pellet and paintball guns, according to officials and witnesses.
In addition to causing the eight deaths, the attack injured 12 people. Nine of the injured victims remained hospitalized Wednesday, with four in critical condition.
Saipov, who has worked as a trucker and as an Uber driver, came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan legally in 2010. His immigration history and apparent extremist motive prompted the Trump administration to respond more aggressively than it did after the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead, when the administration urged caution as investigators gathered facts.
The White House and some members of Congress on Wednesday referred to Saipov, who was captured after he was shot in the abdomen by a police officer and remained at Bellevue Hospital, as an "enemy combatant."
Taking aim at congressional Democrats, President Donald Trump called for Congress to crack down on U.S. immigration programs, including the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program that Saipov used to enter the U.S.
"We have to get much tougher, we have to get much smarter, and we have to get much less politically correct," Trump said before the start of a Cabinet meeting in Washington. "We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything."
Trump also criticized the judicial system's handling of terrorism cases, which are addressed in federal court and typically bring convictions and long prison sentences a year or two after arrest.
"We also have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now," Trump said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters at the Capitol that Saipov should be taken to U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Saipov should not be read Miranda rights to remain silent because enemy combatants are not entitled to such rights, McCain said in a separate statement.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who called the attack heartbreaking, also said Saipov "should be held as an enemy combatant under the law of war," saying ample evidence suggests the suspect was motived to kill by radical Islamic thought and acted in allegiance to Islamic State.
Meanwhile, authorities encouraged New Yorkers to go about their business as usual, despite the beefed-up law enforcement they could expect to see around the city out of an "abundance of caution."
A roughly two-mile stretch of highway in lower Manhattan was shut down for the investigation. Authorities also converged on a New Jersey apartment building and a van in a parking lot at a New Jersey Home Depot store, a U.S. official briefed on the investigation said.
The victims reflected a city that is a melting pot and a magnet for visitors: One of the dead was from Belgium. Five were from Argentina and were celebrating the 30th anniversary of a school graduation, according to officials in those countries. The injured included students and staffers on a school bus that the driver rammed.
"This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them," said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
An Ohio-linked Facebook account with a similar spelling of Saipov's name, which has since been removed, revealed little about its owner other than an apparent interest in cars and that he studied at the Tashkent Moliya Institute in Uzbekistan.
A fellow Uzbek truck driver in Ohio, Mirrakhmat Muminov, told The Associated Press that Saipov was "not happy with his life" and bickered with friends and family.
Saipov lost his license because of traffic tickets and companies stopped hiring him, Muminov said. Saipov then moved to New Jersey, where Saipov's friends said his truck engine blew up a few months ago, which "probably hurt him more than anything," Muminov said.
Police said the attacker rented the truck about 2 p.m. at a New Jersey Home Depot and then went into New York City, entering the bike path about an hour later and speeding toward the World Trade Center, the site of the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history.
The driver barreled along the bike path in the truck for the equivalent of about 14 blocks, about eight-tenths of a mile, before slamming into a small yellow school bus.
"A person hopped out of the car with two guns and started yelling and screaming," said a 12-year-old student who had just left a nearby school. "They were yelling 'Allahu akbar.'"
The boy, whose mother asked that his name be withheld, said he ran back into the school, where students cried and huddled in a corner.
Video shot by bystanders showed Saipov walking through traffic wielding what looked like two handguns, but which police later said were a paintball gun and a pellet gun. A police officer shot Saipov when he wouldn't drop the weapons, police said.
The mayhem set off panic in the neighborhood and left the pavement strewn with mangled bicycles and bodies that were soon covered with sheets.
"I saw a lot of blood over there. A lot of people on the ground," said Chen Yi, an Uber driver.
Public schools around the city were open Wednesday, including Stuyvesant High School, next to where Saipov's truck smashed into the school bus.
Jenny Sheffer-Stevens accompanied her son Hutch, 12, back to IS 289 Middle School, which sits near the intersection where the truck hit the bus.
The day before, Hutch had witnessed the immediate aftermath of the attack and saw Saipov emerge from the truck carrying what he thought were two handguns. In a "fight or flight" reaction, he yelled at his classmates to run back into the school, where they sheltered upstairs.
Though students had permission to miss school Wednesday, Sheffer-Stevens said she and her son wanted "a balance between business as usual and keeping the conversation going." She said they passed newsstands where the attack "was on the cover of everything."
New York and other cities around the globe have been on high alert against attacks by extremists in vehicles. England, France and Germany have seen deadly vehicle attacks in the past year or so.
New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner John Miller said Saipov has never been the subject of an NYPD Intelligence Bureau investigation or an FBI investigation, but it was likely that he would be found to have connections to others who have been.
Tuesday's attack came four days after another Uzbek immigrant, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev of Brooklyn, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison after posting a threat on an Uzbek-language website to kill former President Barack Obama on behalf of Islamic State and then trying to fly to Syria to join the group.
Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent his condolences to Trump and the families of the victims and offered his country's assistance in investigating the attack.
