The maroon Honda appeared to show up in Times Square one day in the spring of 2017, turning into the curb on 42nd Street, then speeding north along the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, attack more than 20 people and scattered dozens of others before crashing into a cotton ball on 45th Street.
Witnesses said driver Richard Rojas tried to run away but was quickly apprehended. “I want to kill them,” Mr. Rojas told a traffic enforcement officer at the time, according to a criminal complaint.
Rojas killed one person, 18-year-old Alyssa Elsman from Michigan, who was visiting New York City with relatives, and seriously injured several others, including Ava, his 13-year-old sister. Alyssa, who is being treated for a collapsed and broken lung. Pelvis.
On Wednesday, after about six hours of deliberation, jurors found Mr Rojas “not liable by reason of mental illness or defect” for one count of murder and 23 counts of assault. Many defendants in the US legal system are mentally ill, treated or untreated. The New York Supreme Court ruling in Manhattan was one of the few recent cases where a jury found that illness outweighed evidence of guilt. “It’s a humane judgment,” said Enrico De Marco, one of Rojas’ lawyers. he left the court. “In the end, he’ll get the care he really needs.”
The judge who heard the case, Daniel Conviser, ordered Mr Rojas to be held and said he would draft a search warrant.
When a judgment is rendered not responsible for mental illness or disability, state law requires the judge to order the defendant to undergo a psychiatric examination. If the court finds that the defendant has a “serious mental disorder,” the court must order the defendant to be placed in custody by the state mental health commissioner.
Mr. Rojas’ attack through one of the city’s busiest areas lasted only a few minutes, but caused intense panic, suggesting an attempt car bomb in Times Square in 2010 and the episodes in which terrorists Cars are used as weapons.
His trial, which ran for several weeks, focused on his mental state at the time of the crime. The defense asked jurors to find Rojas not responsible for his actions. Prosecutors countered that even if Mr Rojas was delusional in the case, he was competent enough to know he was harming people.
Outside court, Thomas Elsman, Alyssa’s father, said the ruling was more than disappointing.
The family will not tell the court the impact of his daughter’s death, he said. And Mr. Rojas, he said, deserves to be punished. Mr. Elsman said: “He did not go to jail.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg noted in a statement following the ruling that Mr. Rojas would remain in custody.
“We offer our condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of Alyssa Elsman, who has suffered a terrible and tragic loss, and all the victims of this horrific incident,” he said. .
The Times Square attack is not the first time Mr. Rojas has run into the law. After growing up in the Bronx, he spent three years in the Navy. In 2012, he was arrested near a Florida base and charged after an incident where he allegedly assaulted a taxi driver.
He was taken to court in 2013 and pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol, defaulting on debt, being drunk and engaging in disorderly conduct and communicating a threat. Mr Rojas spent two months in a Navy brigade and in 2014 the Navy received what the Navy called an “other than honorable” discharge.
When Mr. Rojas returned to the Bronx, friends sayhe seems paranoid and irritable, expressing disdain for the government and railing against taxes, parking tickets and police stops.
Less than a week before the Times Square incident, according to court documents, Mr Rojas was charged with rape and possession of a weapon after threatening a man with a knife to the apartment. his mother’s household to notarize his papers. “You are trying to steal my identity,” Rojas claimed in that incident, according to a criminal complaint.
Several relatives of Mr Rojas testified as defense witnesses, describing how, as one of his lawyers put it, he had “fallen into a state of madness”, even attempting to kill himself. death. Two psychiatrists also came forward, with one testifying that Mr. Rojas had named, “James,” for a monstrous voice he said he had heard.
That voice played an important role in the Seventh Avenue case, defense attorney De Marco told jurors during his closing session, saying “a god-like person named James ordered him to crash his car into people.”
“He is following orders from a supernatural being,” added Mr. De Marco. “His reality is altered by his acute mental state.”
Mr. De Marco also told jurors that Mr. Rojas had not made the statement of wanting to kill the person police attributed to him.
A prosecutor, Alfred Peterson, in his brief, attested to the severe injuries some of whom Mr. Rojas had sustained in his vehicle, some of whom testified.
There’s Caroline Johns, an executive assistant, who’s out to lunch; She has a punctured lung. There’s Jessica Williams, a Midtown high school student on her senior day off; Her spine separates from her pelvis. And there was Thomas Henry, a retired Metropolitan Transport Authority employee who was staying with his family; he was hit in the head and has long-term cognitive problems.
Mr Peterson told jurors that even if Mr Rojas believed he was attacking a “spirit” on the Seventh Avenue sidewalk, he had to know he was also attacking real people, because of his ability to perform the spin top of the car and drive underneath the scaffolding without. crashing into it shows competence and awareness.
Mr Peterson later said Mr Rojas got into a fight with a traffic officer and tried to run away, suggesting he was thinking: “I did something wrong and I need to get away.”
Mr Rojas also told doctors that police should have shot him and was told while in custody, “I’m never going out,” added Mr. Peterson, pointing to those claims as proof. further evidence that Mr. Rojas knew he had committed the crime. crime.
After the attack, police officials said, Rojas testified that he smoked PCP. But toxicology tests did not detect the extreme mood-altering drug in Mr Rojas’ urine or blood, Mr Peterson said, suggesting that is another indication the defendant was aware of what i did.
Mr Peterson told jurors: “He recognized his situation and made a defense. “It’s strong evidence that he knows what happened in Times Square.”
