Witnesses describe harrowing scene as U-Haul barreled into pedestrians in Bay Ridge
NEW YORK -- As the U-Haul truck involved in Monday's incident barreled through Brooklyn, hitting pedestrians, the people who saw it all happen were in complete shock.
CBS2 spoke to witnesses in Bay Ridge.
Debris lay strew across seven crime scenes in the borough as police try to retrace the suspect's violent path.
For the dozens of people who bore witness to the indiscriminate rampage, the images are hard to shake.
"The guy who got hit was in the middle of the road. People dropping to the sidewalk. He was like bleeding all over. His head was covered a lot. He was like unconscious," Katherine Aronova said.
Witnesses say at around 10:30 a.m., they heard a bang and the sound of metal scrapping near 5th Avenue and Bay Ridge Parkway.
When they ran outside, they saw a U-Haul with what appeared to be a bicycle trapped underneath, along with a victim suffering from severe head trauma.
"We rolled down the window and saw a U-Haul truck coming down the road going down the wrong side of the road. It was dragging a motorbike. It looked like an Uber Eats driver. As we came around a second time, we saw all of the belongings of the person driving it," Jennifer Melough said.
Moments later, surveillance caught the same U-Haul near 72nd Street and 3rd Avenue, hitting a moped before mounting a sidewalk and narrowly missing a pedestrian as police gave chase.
"He was very shocked because he said if he didn't jump too fast like that you will be underneath. Because the guy who was driving, I don't know what this maniac was doing and what he was running from the cops for. But he was running for something," Tarek Mustafa said.
Mustafa is friends with the man who dove for safety. That man was seen receiving treatment from paramedics, who also rushed the moped driver to the hospital.
For a moment, Mustafa said he thought he was about to become a victim, too.
"I thought this guy was going to hit me. I'm in a corner, you know, when he came in first. And then he changed his mind. And he got to the sidewalk in the front of my car. So between me and him, but like few feet," Mustafa said.
Although the NYPD now says the attack does not appear to be terror-related, families at first feared the worst, remembering an ISIS-inspired 2017 rampage in Manhattan that killed eight people.
"Yeah, that was looking a little bit like, like a terrorist type of thing because it looked like everybody was like, you know, panic. And I mean, the police department and the ambulance came pretty fast. Amazing job picking these people up," witness Tony Morales said.