Possibly. He looks like a very angry person in his photo (no Buddhist meditation there!).
So far as I know, they’re still looking for a second person, so perhaps he fell in with some angry ideology that “justified” this and made him feel that he was doing something heroic.
His father is very involved in Dem politics in New York and also seems to consider himself “Mr. Trinidad,” judging by some voter information on him, so who knows?
Could very well be, and it wouldn't surprise me to discover it was Islam. I would also think that his parents had high expectations that he couldn't fulfill. My model is Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.