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[smjjames]

A) he shouted "Allahu Akbar", kind of gives the game away,

Just before a Garuda Airbus A300B-4 crashed into the jungle near Medan, Indonesia, the pilot screamed "Aaaaaaah! Allahu Akbar!" into his radio. According to a radio communication transcript, the pilot's conversation with the air controller had been in English, but his last words were this Arabic phrase as the plane crashed on September 26, 1997, killing all 234 people aboard in Indonesia's deadliest crash. It was suspected that the crash may have been due to either disorientation or engine failure caused by local dense smog resulting from forest fires.[12][13]

Sure. Anyone involved in an accident (this one involves a plane, no less!) shouting takbir is a terrorist.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No, I'm not saying the guy involved here is "not a terrorist," he got out of his truck with [fake?] guns and was acting threatening, so at the very least he was a danger. Either terrorist, or drunk/fucked up as all hell. But without that, dude losing control of his truck and shouting takbir out of stress and terror is... Like, completely normal for anyone raised in a muslim culture. It is *definitely* not a "they're a terrorist!" codeword, the mere prescence of takbir in a situation like "running into a crowd" does not constituent evidence of being a terrorist, again because "loses control -> fucking scared as shit - > Takbir!" is a completely logical pathway of events.

Isn't 'Allahu Ackbar' also used in the same sorts of context as 'Oh My God' would be?

[martinuzz]

For a similar example, buying a can of gasoline is not a malicious act. Pouring it around someone's property is, even though it is not a crime to do so (though it may involve the commission of a lesser crime such as trespassing to have done so, but that's not the point).

How is pouring gasoline on someone's land not a crime? Are there no environmental laws where you live? And are there no vandalism laws against salting someone's fields? Over here, it would be a double felony, even without setting it on fire.

[Maximum Spin]

Pouring gasoline on someone's land is not a crime where I live as long as you're not trespassing, ie, you have the owner's permission. Furthermore, it's obviously not even a malicious act unless you're doing it with specifically malicious intent, such as to commit arson. If you're just starting a bonfire, say, it's totally fine.

[Starver]

I want to note that this looks to me like a Suicide-By-Cop attempt, making use of the obvious prejudices - perhaps because those prejudices drove him to it. (Absolutely no pun intended!) For once, it seems that the guy didn't get this result, whatever the true aim of the casualties.

Also, of the eight killed, five were Argentinian, one Belgian, other two not yet reported. Doesn't mean anything at all in an apparently random attack, but discounts a well-planned attack against the maximum number of Americans. (Or a really deviously well-planned assassination of the steel-firm owner!) Comparing and contrast with Vegas is hard, but I doubt this was planned or designed with anything like the same dedication to death and destruction.  Some weeks of deep-seated brooding, max, and one trip to a retail park?

[Dorsidwarf]

Descan, generally: I wish to clarify that I was being facetious, then.

I'll be honest, I don't believe you in the slightest.

[Sheb]

Speaking of which, do we know what the Vegas shooter motivations were?

[Starver]

Speaking of which, do we know what the Vegas shooter motivations were?

Him? Oh, he was a lone wolf. Nobody could have done anything to stop him. Move on.

[Flying Dice]

Explanations range from "No fucking clue" to "Alphabet soup agency false flag to create an excuse to take our guns."

Speaking of which, do we know what the Vegas shooter motivations were?

Him? Oh, he was a lone wolf. Nobody could have done anything to stop him. Move on.

He said nothing political of note, published/left behind no manifesto, had no known prior connections, and gave little indication of planning (sans after-the-fact knowledge) and none of mental instability. It's a meme these days but that dude genuinely appears to have been a lone wolf nutter with something wrong in his head. You're using the meme wrong, you're supposed to apply it to the guys with ties to white nationalist groups who stab Muslims on trains.

[Starver]

It was more something about the relative amounts of terror and intent, really, that I was aiming at.

New York guy tried to cash in on terrorism, it seems, but I predict he's more a random Gone Postal than Paddock. I doubt we'll find any hard-drives conspicuously missing, for example.

(Has ISIS claimed this one, yet? Actually, that would swing me back again if they haven't, perversly. Unless the duty Twitterer hasn't yet been replaced since the last drone-strike or something.)

[Ehndras]

The truck crash and school bus occurred right in front of my high school, as kids were being let out. I'm not very happy about this.

*hugs* To you and those in your community. On the not-so-opposite end, I'm a town and a half away from Paterson, NJ where the psycho-scumbag reportedly lived for years, having recently moved out of Elizabeth,NJ after the other terrorist attempted to bomb my morning commute train station, literally right where I walked. Dafuq.

[Ehndras]

From my understanding,

NYPD/FBI have done a damn good job. Investigation of his data trail has turned up links to ISIS, though I can't conclusively state whether ISI- claimed responsibility for the attack of-yet. Seems the Uzbeki perp is a former/current New Jersey resident with rudimentary knowledge of NYC. Once a resident of Paterson, NJ, just a few minutes away from the other recent Elizabeth, NJ attempted terror bombing.

Once they find out who was listed as the financially-responsible party, as well as who's driver's license was used to rent the pickup, they'll follow that to either his on/off-record finances and thus offline/online purchases, as well as whatever state he may have been licensed in under any related aliases, and go from there.

In my experience handling legal documents and working with immigrants, I've noted - to our combined frustration - that the US Gov't often chops up foreign names in order to simplify the formatting for many forms of identification.

At least in my experience working with insurance, the department of motor vehicles, and immigration, its been a flaming nightmare to match up half a dozen variations of a single individual's identity for this exact reason. Social security has one name, visa had another, greencard yet another, driver's license another, personal tax identification number yet another, out of state licence prior to transfer yet another... Logistical clusterfuck when the presence or absence of a letter, or combining a typical longer South American name like Ana Maria Gonçalves Da Silva into Anamaria G. Dasilva, Ana M. Silva, Maria G. Dasilva, so on and so forth. Effectively, this diverges a single individual's legal/financial/data trail into two or more separate identities that may or may not have enough parallels to get a solid hit.

Not to mention how disgustingly easy it is for people to get false identities... Hell, we had a local business get shut down by the FBI for falsifying passports, driver's licenses, and what-have-you. One of them got caught, the other fled the country. Too bad they didn't nab both of 'em. I used to see false documentation on a fairly regular basis when working in the insurance industry. A lot of times its damn near impossible to verify, outside of a hunch that something's off about texture/color/material/language.

Let's not even get started on international driver's licenses constantly made using falsified foreign driver's licenses that allow drivers to own and operate vehicles with practically no paper trail. This is due to the inherent difficulty or downright impossibility of verifying a foreign driver's license, especially for countries where every friggin' state and municipality has its own size, material, wording, coloration, and dating mechanisms.

I can't count how many times I've bitched people out for bringing me falsified documents, which I only caught because I had previously worked with - and retained copies of - licenses from same-similar nations/regions.

Nothing really prevents an American citizen itself from literally printing out a fake license from some random country using an assumed name to obtain an international driver's license, get insurance with Geico or Progressive (only two I know that allow INTL DL's), renting a truck from Uhaul/home depot/lowes/etc, and pulling this shit off.

*facepalm and sigh* Man, I'd love to work for the FBI right now.

[RedKing]

As if NYC didn't have enough reasons to build a wall to keep out New Jersey. 

My guess is that once they have a chance to thoroughly grill this guy, it'll turn out that he saw some shit online, thought "yay, I wanna help the Caliphate too!" and carried out out a clever and cunning plan with all of five minutes' worth of planning to it.

If he was hardcore, foreign-trained ISIS I don't think for a second he would have allowed himself to be taken alive.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

With the state of his preparation I'm now genuinely starting to wonder if the early "road rage" reports aren't half-true after all. Maybe he got in some shit on the road and decided to become a martyr ahead of schedule?

[RedKing]

Dude had been an Uber driver for six months, apparently.

I'm not sure why he'd be carrying a BB gun and a paintball gun, but then again, most cabbies in NYC used to keep a gun visible up front to deter anybody from trying to rob them. Maybe he got them as props for the same purpose?

"Don't mess with me, I blue you away!"
"Don't you mean blow away?"
"Uhhhhhh....sure." >_>

[Starver]

Dude had been an Uber driver for six months, apparently.

And been frustrated at being unable to get work, at various points in time. Which adds up with the "came over non-religious, got radicalised on US soil" story going round (good luck Extreme Vetting that!) when life did not turn out not to be all Apple Pie and The American Dream for him.

I'm not sure why he'd be carrying a BB gun and a paintball gun, but then again, most cabbies in NYC used to keep a gun visible up front to deter anybody from trying to rob them. Maybe he got them as props for the same purpose?

If he got them from a Toys'R'Us next to the Home Depot, in the same visit in which he picked up the vehicle, I would not be surprised.


Not that I know anything like enough to start asking for consultancy fees of the NYPD, but I think I'm happy applying Occam, prior to the next lot of actual revelations to come. I can admit I'm wrong later. Better than saying "I knew it all along!". Anyway, I'm there with my "guy goes nuts (insane and/or angry) and does this thing with a minimum of planning" idea. Doesn't help anybody, to lay it down like that, but my long-odds side-bet on "it was a rival Argentinian steel-plant owner that orchestrated it" is even less helpful, so...