Witnesses said the driver, Richard Rojas, tried to escape but was quickly arrested. “I wanted to kill them,” Rochas told a traffic police at the time, according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Rojas killed one person, Alyssa Elsman, 18, of Michigan, who was visiting New York with relatives, and seriously injured many others, including Alyssa’s 13-year-old sister, Ava, who was receiving treatment for a lung collapse. and broken pelvis. On Wednesday, after about six hours of discussion, jurors found Mr. Rochas “not responsible for mental illness or defect” for one count of murder and 23 counts of assault. Many defendants in the American legal system suffer from mental illness, with or without treatment. The ruling in New York’s Manhattan Supreme Court was one of the few recent cases in which a jury found that the disease outweighed the evidence of guilt. “It’s a human verdict,” said one of Rojas’s lawyers, Enrico De Marco. left the courthouse. “At last he will receive the care he really needs.” The judge who heard the case, Daniel Conviser, ordered Mr Rojas to be detained and said he would issue an examination order. When a verdict of irresponsibility due to mental illness or disability is issued, state law requires the judge to order the accused to undergo a psychiatric examination. If the court finds that the accused has a “dangerous mental disorder”, it must then issue a warrant for the accused to detain the state mental health commissioner. Mr. Rojas’ outburst in one of the busiest areas of the city lasted only a few minutes, but caused a great deal of panic, comparing it to a car bombing attempt in Times Square in 2010 and to 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 not responsible for his actions. Prosecutors said that even if Mr. Rojas had hallucinations during the incident, he was capable enough to know that he was harming people. Outside the courthouse, Thomas Elsman, Alyssa’s father, said the verdict was more than disappointing. The family, he said, could not tell the court about the impact of his daughter’s death. And Mr. Rochas, he said, deserved the punishment. “He is not going to jail,” Elsman said. Manhattan Prosecutor Alvin Bragg said in a statement that Rochas would remain in custody following the verdict. “Our condolences continue to be with the family, friends and loved ones of Alyssa Elsman, who suffered a terrible and tragic loss, and all the victims of this horrific incident,” she said. The attack on Times Square was not Mr. Rochas’s first encounter with the law. After 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 a battery after an incident in which he allegedly attacked a taxi driver. He was convicted in a military court in 2013 and found guilty of driving under the influence of drunkenness, inability to pay debts, drunk and naughty behavior and threatening communication. Mr. Rojas spent two months in a Navy lane and in 2014 received what the Navy called “in addition to an honorary” exemption. When Mr Rojas returned to the Bronx, friends said, he seemed paranoid and irritable, expressing contempt for the government and despising taxes, parking tickets and police stops. Less than a week before the Times Square incident, according to court documents, Mr. Rojas was charged with threatening and criminal possession of a firearm after he used a knife to threaten a man who came to his mother’s apartment to validate notarized documents. . “You are trying to steal my identity,” Mr Rochas said during the incident, according to a criminal complaint. Some of Rochas’s relatives testified as defense witnesses, describing how, as one of his lawyers said, he had “gone mad”, even attempting suicide. Two psychiatrists also took a stand in defense, with one testifying that Mr. Rojas gave a name, “James,” to an incorporeal voice he said he heard. That voice played a key role in the Seventh Avenue incident, De Marco, the defense attorney, told jurors during his rally, saying “a theophilic man named James orders him to crash his car on people “. “It follows a command from a supernatural being,” de Marco added. “His reality is altered by his acute psychotic state.” Mr De Marco also told jurors that Mr Rojas had not made the statement that he wanted to kill people whom police had attributed to him. A prosecutor, Alfred Peterson, in his summary, repeated the serious injuries suffered by many people who were hit by Mr. Rojas with his car, some of whom had testified. It was Caroline Johns, an executive assistant, who was out for lunch. suffered a puncture in the lung. It was Jessica Williams, a high school sophomore in Midtown, who was in high school. her spine was detached from her pelvis. And it was Thomas Henry, a retired employee of the Metropolitan Transport Authority who was with his family. hit in the head and has ongoing cognitive problems. Mr Peterson told jurors that even if Mr Rojas believed he was hitting “ghosts” on the sidewalk on Seventh Avenue, he should have known he was hitting real people as well, as his ability to flip and drive down scaffolding without the crash in it showed ability and awareness. Mr Peterson then said Mr Rojas had fought with a traffic agent and tried to flee, indicating he was thinking: ‘I did something wrong and I have to leave’. Mr Rochas also told doctors that police should have shot him, and he was heard saying, “I will never go out,” Mr Peterson added, citing further evidence that Mr Rojas he knew he had committed. crimes. After the attack, police officials said, Mr. Rojas claimed to have smoked PCP. However, toxicological tests did not detect the powerful drug that changes mood in Mr. Rojas’s urine or blood, Peterson said, suggesting that this was another indication that the accused knew what he had done. “He realized the situation he was in and offered an excuse,” Mr Peterson told the jury. “It’s strong evidence that he knew what had happened in Times Square.”
