NYC Terror Attack: 'The most innocent people in the middle of the most innocent pursuits'

All were enjoying a spectacular fall day in Lower Manhattan, a Halloween day when horror, in the form of a terror-bent truck driver, changed all that.

New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill on Wednesday confirmed the names of the eight people — two Americans and six foreign tourists — killed in Tuesday's terrorist truck attack on the Lower West Side.

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They were in their 20's, 30's and 40's, architects, project managers, and a mom of two young boys.

There are faces beyond the numbers.

Darren Drake, 33, a New Milford, New Jersey, native and former member of the town's  school board, was pursuing another degree at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, Northjersey.com reported. The 2003 graduate of New Milford High School had already graduated from Rutgers.

Drake was a project manager at Moody's Investors Service at the World Trade Center, according to his father, James Drake, who choked back tears as he talked by phone about his only child on Wednesday.

"He was the most innocent, delicate kid in the world," said his father.

The other American killed in Tuesday's attack was 23-year-old Nicholas Cleves, of Manhattan, a software engineer at Unified Digital Group and graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. 

Cleves attended Little Red School House & Elizabeth Irwin High School, the city's first progressive school.

While at Skidmore, he earned the Sibyl V. Kirby Scholarship, given to "only the brightest and most talented students." He was an IT help desk assistant at Skidmore, helping to keep the campus printers and computers running.

The other six victims were foreign nationals, drawn to Manhattan as tourists. 

Their passports may have been from Argentina and Belgium, but Mayor Bill DeBlasio on Wednesday said of them: : "We now and forever will consider them New Yorkers."

Five of the dead were Argentine school chums captured on video — moments before they died — smiling as they cycled along the Hudson River on a 30th reunion trip their successful classmate had paid for.

One was a young Belgian mother of two who was excited about seeing the New York City Marathon and spending Halloween in New York with her two small boys.

DeBlasio blasted the attack, "targeting the most innocent people in the middle of the most innocent pursuits."

"(It) was meant to make people feel they could not go about their normal lives," he said. "What New Yorkers showed already is we will not change, we will not be cowed, we will not be thrown off by anything."

The Argentines were 1987 graduates of a rigorous high school, Polytechnic Institute of Rosario, on a 30th class reunion trip that included stops in Boston and New York. They all came from Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city, northwest of Buenos Aires. 

The Argentine government confirmed they are: Hernán Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damián Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferrucci.

A sixth member of the reunion, Martin Ludovico Marro, who lives in Boston, was being treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for injuries sustained in the attack. Four other members of the reunion were uninjured.

Elij had spent about a year organizing the trip for his pals, most of whom became successful architects.

On Saturday, the States-bound former schoolmates posed for a photo at Rosario Islas Malvinas Airport before jetting to the United States. Their T-shirts read "Libre" — free.

Elij, a successful steel industrialist, footed the bill for his school buddies. The 48-year-old made steel products in Rosario, where the "poli" high school was.

Pagnucco, 49, was an architect whose friends called him "Picho." Ferruchi, was also an architect, the designer of a high-end residential building near the Parana River in Rosario. Angelini was also an architect, a father of three. Mendoza was also an architect.

A video shows the pals riding bikes down the path along the Hudson, minutes before the attack. They are laughing and smiling, free. Soon, they would be walking alongside their bikes, two by two, when the carnage began.

Classmate Ariel Benvenuto escaped harm when the truck missed him by less than a foot. Hours later, he would make the phone call home, to tell his wife what had happened, how their joy had turned to something gruesome.

In his statement at Wednesday's press conference, DeBlasio said: "As we now move forward, we start with giving our prayers to the families of the eight who were killed. Six of them came from other nations here because they saw New York as a special place to be. We now and forever will consider them New Yorkers. They shared this tragedy with them. We will remember them as New Yorkers.

The mayor continued: "They were here because this city is a beacon to people all over the world, a place that every kind of person comes to and is respected. And that won’t change. This was an attack on our values, an effort to break our spirit, but as an effort to break our spirit, it failed."

The mayor of Staden, a village of about 11,000 in northwest Belgium, not far from the English Channel, knew that Ann-Laure Decadt and was heading to New York City with her 3-year-old and 3-month-old sons.

He dropped them a note before they left, excited for the trip that lay ahead, writing: “Wow, you’ll have a great time there, with Halloween and the New York marathon and all.”

On Wednesday, he took to Twitter to reflect on the fact that Decadt was killed in the terrorist attack.

“Our congregation is in deep mourning, shocked by the horrific unfair violence,” he wrote. “A life snatched away. Our thoughts go out to the Decadt family from Oostnieuwkerke and all the victims of the attack in #Manhattan #NY Strength to each in this very difficult time!”

Decadt's sons, and her sisters and mother who were on the trip with them, were uninjured when the suspect mowed down pedestrians and cyclists on Manhattan's West Side. Decadt's husband, Alexander Naessens, did not make the trip, and learned of his wife's death when a hospital staff member called Tuesday night. 

Contributing: Philip DeVencentis, The Associated Press