LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — British police were holding a 53-year-old man on Tuesday over that turned a joyous soccer celebration in Liverpool to tragedy and sent more than two dozen people to hospitals, four of them in very serious condition.
Merseyside Police said they are not treating the incident as terrorism and are not looking for other suspects. The force has not identified the arrested driver. Police in Britain usually do not name suspects until they are charged.
Detectives were working to piece together how a minivan plowed into crowds packing a narrow street, just after the players of Liverpool Football Club had celebrated the Premier League championship with an open-topped bus parade.
Water Street, near the River Mersey in the heart of the city, was cordoned off by police tape, and a blue tent had been erected on the road strewn with the detritus of celebration, including bottles, cans and Liverpool flags.
Liverpool City Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram said four of the injured were “very, very ill in hospital.”
The North West Ambulance Service said a total of 47 people were injured, of whom 27 were taken to local hospitals, while 20 were treated at the scene of the crash for minor injuries. There were no reported deaths.
Four of the injured are children, said ambulance service spokesman Dave Kitchin.
Four of the victims, including a child, were trapped under the van and firefighters had to lift the vehicle to free them.
Hundreds of thousands of Liverpudlians had crammed the streets of the port city in northwest England on Monday to celebrate the team winning England’s this season for a record-tying 20th top-flight title.
As the parade was wrapping up, a minivan turned into a street just off the parade route and plowed into the sea of fans wrapped in their red Liverpool scarves, jerseys and other memorabilia. A video on social media showed the van strike a man, tossing him in the air, before veering into a larger crowd, where it plowed a path through the group and pushed bodies along the street before coming to a stop.
“It was extremely fast,” said Harry Rashid, who was with his wife and two young daughters as the minivan passed by them. “Initially, we just heard the pop, pop, pop of people just being knocked off the bonnet of a car.”
Rashid said the crowd charged the halted vehicle and began smashing windows.
“But then he put his foot down again and just plowed through the rest of them, he just kept going,” Rashid said. “It was horrible. And you could hear the bumps as he was going over the people.”
Police identified the suspect as a white local man, in a possible decision to prevent misinformation from flooding social media.
Last summer, a teen in the nearby town of Southport killed three girls in a and wounded 10 others, including two adults. An incorrect name of the suspect was spread on social media and people said he was an asylum-seeker. In fact, he had been born in the U.K. Rioting spread across England and Northern Ireland, targeting Muslims and refugees in hotels for asylum-seekers, lasting about a week.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the scenes in Liverpool appalling and hailed the bravery of rescuers.
“Everyone, especially children, should be able to celebrate their heroes without this horror,” Starmer said. “The city has a long and proud history of coming together through difficult times. Liverpool stands together and the whole country stands with Liverpool.”
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Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.
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