Mayor de Blasio praises resilience of Stuyvesant High students

Two days after a suspected ISIS-inspired terrorist killed eight and injured 11 by driving a truck onto a Manhattan bike path and hitting a school bus near Stuyvesant High School, Mayor Bill de Blasio and city Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña lauded the resilience of the campus’s teachers and students.

Two students injured in the attack when the truck struck their bus have been released from the hospital and are back in school, officials said.

“They thought it was important to be at school the next day, to mourn those who had been lost and to show that terror would not stop us, would not change us,” the mayor told reporters outside Stuyvesant Thursday morning after he and Fariña met with students, teachers, guidance counselors and administrators. “They saw it as their duty to be back at this school and send a message — it was very moving.”

Right after the attack, suspect Sayfullo Saipov was shot and wounded by NYPD Officer Ryan Nash of Medford. Saipov was ordered held without bail Wednesday on terrorism charges.

Stuyvesant, one of the city’s most academically prestigious high schools, was on lockdown for hours after the attack, said de Blasio, who praised the school system and police for following established protocol and acting swiftly to shelter students in place.

Fariña, who said she visited all four schools in the immediate area impacted by the attack, said the driver of the school bus has been released from the hospital; the bus aide had surgery but “should be fine”; and a student had surgery and “appears to be fine.”

Another student, a 16-year-old boy, who had minor injuries, went to school the next day and told Fariña “he had to go to school because he was working on 100 percent attendance.”

The school didn’t send a bus for him the next day, assuming he’d be out, but his mother got a car service from their home in Brooklyn to get him to school, Fariña said.

“He said to me, ‘I told myself, I’m going to be fine, because a lot of people want to help me,’ ” Fariña said.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the school attended by the students injured on the bus.

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.