After an embarrassing ceremony filled with flubs that angered many of the attendees, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio made a startling admission: his staff had forgotten to even plan the event and had thrown together a slapdash effort at a memorial only after the mass murder at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
On October 31, 2017, an Islamist terrorist plowed a rented truck into numerous pedestrians and bicyclists on the Hudson River Park bike path. Eight people were killed in the attack and a dozen more were injured before the attacker crashed the truck into a school bus and was then shot by New York Police. The suspect survived the shooting and is expected to face trial next year on multiple charges of murder and terrorism.
New York City held a memorial for the one year anniversary, and by all accounts it was a slipshod mess. Family members of the victims were not notified that a memorial was even going to take place until the day before in some cases, and the ceremony was disjointed and obviously not well coordinated. Perhaps most embarrassingly, de Blasio forgot to even mention the names of the victims until he stepped down from the podium, and one of the mourners asked him if he didn’t plan to read off a list of names of the victims.
Afterwards, de Blasio made a surprisingly frank admission: he and his aides completely forgot to plan the memorial until the last minute. “The problem was the event was put together way too late. It was not originally planned,” de Blasio told WCBS. – READ MORE