The mother of Jose Pimentel, the alleged "lone wolf" terrorist the NYPD happily trotted out before the cameras yesterday, has apologized to the city just as neighbors are starting to show up for the obligatory "never saw it coming" quotes. "I want to apologize to the city," Carmen Sosa told reporters today. "I love New York and I’ve been here since 1987. I’m very disappointed by what my son is doing."
"I don't know what's going on, I just want peace," she went on. "I just want to say I love him, I didn't raise him that way. He changed." Sosa also tried to explain that he had become something of a new person since his failed marriage in Schenectady. When he first convereted though it concerned her, "he wasn't a fanatic. He prayed and went to the mosque."
"I'm Catholic. I believe in God. I don't support the Muslims," she said as she went on to say that she'd pulled him back from Schenectady "because I didn't like the way he was acting." But the move didn't help and over time his views grew more worrisome to her, though she says he didn't express animosity toward the U.S. "He never said he hated America to me," she said. “He never said anything about the military or the war.”
Oh, and referring to the article in the Al Qaeda magazine where Pimtel allegedly got the recipe for his bombs ("How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom") she said, "I don’t know what he did in the house. I know he didn’t do it in the kitchen."
Finally, reporters have been talking to Pimentel's neighbors in Hamilton Heights and the comments are exactly what you've come to expect from these situations: "He used to talk to everybody who came out—he used to open the door for my wife," one neighbor said. "It's really shocking that he was plotting something that bad."
Another didn't seem to know Pimental, but pointed out that "This building is very quiet. You don’t hear anything strange. You don’t see anything strange."
