With is face pretty much being captured on camera in the hostel and in an Uber I'm not sure there was much point hiding it. He was going to get caught shortly whatever he did.
If he ditched the gun, fake IDs and any other evidence he had tying him to the crime and just gave the cops his real id and denied being in NYC recently, it would have made it much harder to prosecute. Without any physical evidence, he just looked like the shooter.
Not sure I agree with that. Had he stayed in hiding for months, he wouldn’t have been ID’d. Why is he walking around bare-faced a few days later? My take is he planned the actual act but didn’t think about much beyond that.