The brown Honda seemed to show up in Times Square out of nowhere one spring in 2017, turning a curb on 42nd Street, then racing north on the sidewalk of Seventh Avenue, hitting more than 20 people and scattering dozens more before to collide. pillar on 45th Street.
Witnesses said the driver, Richard Rojas, tried to escape but was quickly apprehended. “I wanted to kill them,” Mr Rojas told a traffic agent at the time, according to a criminal complaint.
Mr Rojas killed one man, Alice Ellsman, 18, of Michigan, who was visiting New York with relatives, and seriously injured several others, including Alice’s 13-year-old sister, Ava, who was being treated for collapsed lungs. broken pelvis.
On Wednesday, after about six hours of deliberations, jurors found Mr Rojas “not liable for a mental illness or defect” on one charge of murder and 23 counts of assault. Many defendants in the American legal system suffer from mental illness, whether treated or untreated. The decision of the Supreme Court of New York in Manhattan was one of the few recent cases in which a jury found that the disease exceeded the evidence of guilt. “This is a humane sentence,” said one of Mr Rojas’ lawyers, Enrico De Marco. he left the courtroom. “He’ll finally get the care he really needs.”
The judge hearing the case, Daniel Conweiser, ordered Mr Rojas detained and said he would issue a search warrant.
When convicted of irresponsibility due to mental illness or defect, state law requires a judge to order the defendant to undergo a psychiatric examination. If the court finds that the defendant has a “dangerous mental disorder”, he must issue an order to keep the defendant in the custody of the State Commissioner for Mental Health.
Mr Rojas’ riot in one of the city’s busiest areas lasted just minutes, but caused a great deal of panic, sparking comparisons to an attempt to blow up a car in Times Square in 2010 and episodes in which terrorists used cars as weapons .
His trial, which lasted several weeks, focused on his mental state at the time of the incident. The defense asked the jurors to find Mr Rojas irresponsible for his actions. Prosecutors objected that even if Mr Rojas had been misled at the time of the incident, he was competent enough to know he was harming people.
Outside the courthouse, Thomas Ellsman, Alice’s father, said the sentence was more than disappointing.
The family, he said, will not be able to tell the court about the consequences of his daughter’s death. And Mr. Rojas, he said, deserves punishment. “He’s not going to jail,” Mr Elsman said.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in his release after sentencing that Mr. Rojas would remain in custody.
“Our condolences continue to be with the family, friends and relatives of Alice Ellsman, who suffered a terrible and tragic loss, and all the victims of this horrific incident,” he said.
The Times Square attack was not Mr Rojas’ first encounter with the law. Growing up in the Bronx, he spent three years in the Navy. In 2012, he was arrested near a base in Florida and charged with injury after an incident in which he allegedly attacked a taxi driver.
He was tried by a military court in 2013 and pleaded guilty to drunk driving, non-payment of debt, drunken behavior and hooliganism, and reporting a threat. Mr Rojas spent two months in a naval brigade and was fired in 2014, which the navy called “different from honor”.
When Mr Rojas returned to the Bronx, friends said, he seemed paranoid and irritable, despised the government and opposed taxes, parking tickets and police stations.
Less than a week before the Times Square incident, according to court documents, Mr Rojas was charged with threatening and criminally possessing a weapon after using a knife to threaten a man who came to his mother’s apartment to certify documents for him. “You are trying to steal my identity,” Mr Rojas said at the time of the incident, according to a criminal complaint.
Some of Mr Rojas’ relatives testified as defense witnesses, describing how, as one of his lawyers said, he had gone “crazy” and even tried to commit suicide. Two psychiatrists also defended themselves, with one testifying that Mr. Rojas named “James” in a disembodied voice he said he heard.
That voice played a key role in the Seventh Avenue incident, Mr. De Marco, the defense attorney, told jurors during his summary, saying that “a god-like man named James ordered him to crash his car into people. “.
“He is following a command from a supernatural being,” Mr De Marco added. “His reality is changing from his acute psychotic state.”
Mr De Marco also told jurors that Mr Rojas had not made the statement of intent to kill people that police attributed to him.
A prosecutor, Alfred Peterson, summed up the serious injuries sustained by several people that Mr Rojas hit with his car, some of whom testified.
There was Caroline Jones, the executive assistant, who was out for lunch; she received a punctured lung. There was Jessica Williams, a Midtown prom girl who was on her day to miss senior; her spine parted from her pelvis. There was also Thomas Henry, a retired Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee who was with the family; he has been hit in the head and has permanent cognitive problems.
Mr Peterson told the jury that even if Mr Rojas believed he was striking “spirits” on the sidewalk of Seventh Avenue, he must have known he was hitting real people as well, as his ability to turn back and driving under the scaffolding without bumping into it showed competence and awareness.
Then, Mr Peterson said, Mr Rojas got into a fight with a traffic agent and tried to run away, showing that he was thinking, “I did something wrong and I have to get out.”
Mr Rojas also told doctors that the police should have shot him and was heard saying while in custody: “I will never escape,” Mr Peterson added, citing the statements as further evidence that Mr Rojas knew he had committed crimes.
After the attack, police said Mr Rojas claimed to have smoked PCP. But toxicology tests did not detect the powerful mood-altering drug in Mr Rojas’ urine or blood, Mr Peterson said, suggesting that this was another indication that the defendant was aware of what he had done.
“He realized the situation and apologized,” Mr Peterson told the jury. “It’s powerful evidence that he knew what happened in Times Square.
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