Liverpool car crash leaves four "very, very seriously" injured, says city mayor
The investigation rules out terrorist action and the suspect will have to answer for what a vehicle was doing on a road that was closed to traffic.
London"Four very, very seriously injured people are still in hospital," Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram announced Tuesday morning, referring to the multiple car crash in the city center that occurred mid-afternoon on Monday, minutes after the Reds' bus passed by the street, as they were celebrating the title. On Water Street, shortly after six o'clock, a gray Ford Galaxy—according to eyewitnesses—first reversed and then accelerated, hitting a large group of fans. The death toll is 47, four of whom were trapped under the wheels. There were three adults and one child, and it is currently unknown if they are the same number of people who remain in a hospital. Firefighters had to intervene to rescue them. In total, 27 people required hospital treatment and 20 were treated. in situ by emergency crews.
Police arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the outskirts of Liverpool, whose identity has not yet been released. The incident is not being investigated as a terrorist act, Jenny Sims, deputy chief constable of law enforcement for the metropolitan county of Merseyside, said at a press conference on Monday night. However, the motive for the crash remains unknown, as does why the vehicle was traveling in an area that was practically closed to traffic.
In fact, the big question authorities are asking now, and one the mayor has shared with the public, is how the car got there. "Water Street wasn't a thoroughfare for vehicles to travel on; it was closed to traffic. In the direction it was going, towards The Strand [another of the city's central arteries], there were literally hundreds of thousands of people, so no vehicle could have gotten through anyway," Rotheram said.
What can be deduced from the many images circulating on social media is that the Ford was surrounded by a crowd of people who were hitting it, breaking the rear window. The fact that the police do not consider the incident a terrorist attack suggests, consequently, that the driver reacted with anger, which ended in tragedy. Pending the progress of the four "very seriously" injured who remain in the hospital, and based on the images, the driver's flight could have had a much higher cost.
Both British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other political leaders have expressed their concern about the events. For its part, FC Liverpool issued a statement through the X network expressing its support and "prayers for all those who have been affected by this serious incident." The city's other Premier League team, Everton, also expressed its regret over the incident through social media, as did the Premier League itself.
With no recent precedent for similar violent incidents, the police's almost immediate statement detailing the age, race, and nationality of the detainee is interpreted as an attempt to defuse any potential speculation that could be exploited by the far right in the initial hours of information vacuum. Last year, racist and Islamophobic hate messages spread rapidly online after a 19-year-old man with mental health issues murdered three girls in the northwest coastal town of Southport while they were participating in a Taylor Swift-themed party. These messages were followed by riots at mosques and several clashes between police and far-right groups.
This Tuesday, Emily Spurrell, Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside County, stated that it is "standard practice" for law enforcement agencies to make the ethnicity of a suspect public. "It's very important that the police release information as quickly as possible," she said in an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live. Regarding the fact that he had gone public with his targeting, he commented: "It's important that people know who that person is. In this case, they were obviously very clear about who the individual was and they wanted to get that information out. And there were a lot of people who, once again, were using this to spread misinformation, disinformation, and create concern in the community. We're doing everything we can to counter this."
This morning, Water Street remains closed with a large deployment of forensic teams working there.