NEW YORK – The man behind the wheel of the car that slammed into a crowd of pedestrians in Times Square, claimed the life of a woman and injured 22 others, was cleared of responsibility Wednesday due to mental illness.
A jury in New York City accepted an insanity defense, saying Richard Rojas was so psychologically disturbed that he didn’t know what he was doing.
The judge said the finding would qualify Rojas for an indefinite “involuntary mental commitment” rather than a lengthy prison term.
Rojas, 31, was charged in an attack that injured more than 20 people and killed 18-year-old Alyssa Elsman of Michigan, who was visiting the popular tourist destination with her family.
The jury was instructed that if they found that prosecutors had proven their case, they also had to decide whether he “lacked responsibility for mental illness or defect.”
Rojas was fighting murder, assault and other charges in a trial taking place in the shadow of shootings across the country and the political debate in which opponents of gun control have tried to blame the violence to failures in mental health care.
During the trial, prosecutor Alfred Peterson told a Manhattan jury that Richard Rojas was well aware of the carnage he was causing by cutting through helpless tourists in 2017 visiting the popular destination known as “the crossroads of the world.”
It was “impossible for him not to know exactly what was going on,” Peterson said. “But he didn’t stop.”
After Rojas finally crashed his car, his first words to a traffic officer were: “I wanted to kill them all,” the prosecutor added.
Meanwhile, defense attorney Enrico DeMarco said during the trial that Rojas had a history of mental illness that made him unable to comprehend the consequences of his actions that day.
“This is a case about a 26-year-old who lost his mind,” DeMarco said.
Prosecutors admitted that Rojas had some mental problems and that the motive for the attack is unclear. But they also argue that the defendant had led a mostly normal life — serving in the military, getting a real estate license, making friends — and that he does not meet the standard of insanity necessary to release him from liability. They say he had several chances to stop his car on a busy day in Times Square, but he mercilessly drove on until he crashed.
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