The murderous maniac who plowed his car through the heart of Times Square told cops he was hopped up on pot and PCP at the time, officials said Friday — as sources revealed another victim is likely to die.
“I smoked marijuana. I laced the marijuana with PCP,” suspect Richard Rojas said, according to a criminal complaint.
Rojas, 26, allegedly zoomed the wrong way up Seventh Avenue then onto the sidewalk in the center of Times Square on Thursday afternoon, intentionally steering his Honda Accord into fleeing pedestrians for more than three blocks.
He was arraigned on a second-degree murder charge for killing 18-year-old tourist Alyssa Elsman and 20 counts of attempted murder for all the other people he hurt, including four critically.
One of the victims has taken a turn for the worse and is now likely to die, police sources said Friday.
Investigators are still waiting for official lab results but said preliminary tests jibe with Rojas’ admission that he was on PCP, said NYPD Chief of Manhattan South Detectives William Aubry
“There’s preliminary tests that were done, they confirm what his statements were,” Aubry said Friday. “There’s also a more thorough exam that has to be done with the medical examiner, and that’s the blood results. Those are the results that we’re waiting for.”
Aubry said police are also looking into whether mental illness fueled Rojas’s blood lust — an assertion twice made by Mayor de Blasio at separate appearances Friday.
“I spoke to Commissioner [James] O’Neill this morning and one thing that’s abundantly clear now is that this very troubled individual, who committed this heinous act, had a long history of mental-health problems,” de Blasio said during an unrelated press conference in the Rockaways. “Those problems clearly did not get addressed over the years.”
During his arrest, Rojas shouted that he had expected cops to shoot him dead, police sources said.
But Aubry painted a different picture of Rojas’s mental state, arguing that the suspect calculatingly waited for an opening in traffic before he started his rampage — in order to maximize the pedestrian body count.
“He waited for those cars to pass, and he accelerated, striking down these pedestrians — that goes to his state of mind and his motivation,” Aubry said.
Judge Tamiko Amaker remanded Rojas during an arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.
Additional reporting by Max Jaeger