At approximately 3:05 p.m. on October 31, 2017, what was meant to be a harmless, fun Halloween day for all, Uzbek Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov jumped  a curb at West Houston Street and drove a rented flatbed pickup truck down a busy bicycle path on Riverside Drive in New York City, killing twelve and injuring about a dozen innocent civilians over the course of about 17 city blocks.

After plowing into a school bus, the suspect was seen running around the streets of New York, waving two guns around aimlessly and chanting, “Allahu Akbar.” At this point, the police shot and captured the suspect, who has recently been taken to the hospital and is being held in police custody.

It is no secret that this act was a terror attack, for a note was found in the pickup truck classifying the attack in the name of ISIS. It has been found that the suspect was originally from Uzbekistan, but has been living in the U.S. since 2010, specifically in Paterson, New Jersey.

Several victims of this catastrophic attack have recently been classified as five Argentine citizens: Hernán Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi, as well as a Belgian national deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister Didier Reynders.

New York mayor Bill De Blasio has been quoted saying, “This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror,” and WHHS sophomore Maddy Gilman supports De Blasio’s statement with insight that “Halloween is meant to be a fun day where the scariest thing on one’s mind should be ghosts, not death and terror attacks.” Both De Blasio and Maddy provide insight into the horrible extent of this attack and the devastation it has caused.