The first federal death penalty trial of the Biden administration opens Monday in New York City, where Sayfullo Saipov is charged with the 2017 killings of eight people when he allegedly plowed a rental truck into pedestrians and cyclists along the West Side Highway.
The truck attack, which was on Halloween, was the deadliest terror attack in New York since Sept. 11, 2001.
Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan who lived in Florida, Ohio and New Jersey following his arrival in the United States, has pleaded not guilty to charges that include murder in the aid of racketeering.
He was allegedly inspired to commit the killings by ISIS videos he viewed, prosecutors said. The rental truck used in the Oct. 31, 2017, attack was decorated with an ISIS flag.
The suspect allegedly drove the truck on a bike lane and pedestrian walkway in lower Manhattan, near Stuyvesant High School. When the truck collided with a school bus, the driver exited the vehicle holding two objects, a paintball gun and pellet gun, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors alleged Saipov rented the pickup nine days before the attack “so he could practice making turns with the truck in advance of his attack,” prosecutors said.
He chose Halloween to commit the attack, anticipating there would be more civilians on the streets that day, prosecutors alleged.

Abcnews