- Almost 50 people injured, including 27 hospitalized.
- Fans gathered in Liverpool to celebrate the title of Victoria.
- Police say that the incident is not believed to be terrorism.
A car crashed into a multitude of Liverpool fans during a parade that celebrated the premiere football title of his team on Monday, hospitalized 27 people, with two serious injured, but the police said they did not believe that the incident was related to terrorism.
Police said they had arrested a “53 -year -old British white man from the Liverpool area,” who believed he was the driver of the vehicle that hit a large group of supporters who celebrated in the city in the northwest of England.
Twenty people were treated at the scene. Ambulance officials said of the 27 taken to the hospital, four were children. A child and an adult were in a serious condition. Four people trapped under the vehicle had to be released by firefighters.
The videos on social networks showed people thrown into the air while the car got into spectators.
When the car stopped, angry fans converged on him and began to break the windows when police officers intervened to prevent them from reaching the driver.
“We believe that this is an isolated incident, and we are currently not looking for anyone else in relation to him. The incident is not being treated as terrorism,” Jenny Sims told temporary subdirector journalists.
With most people out of work for spring holidays, hundreds of thousands of fans gathered to see the Liverpool team and their staff traveling the city center in a bus open with the Premier League trophy.
An eyewitness said the collision occurred about 10 minutes after the bus transported to the Liverpool team had passed, British Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The incident “launched a very dark shadow about what had been a cheerful day,” said the leader of the City Council of Liverpool, Liam Robinson, on social networks.
Then, a Reuters photographer saw emergency services that brought victims to stretchers to ambulances and debris scattered along the way.
The police were unusually quick to give a description of the man they arrested.
Dal Babu, a former head of the London Metropolitan Police, told the BBC that this was an effort to cool social networks that the episode was an Islamist attack.
The same police force supervised the response to the murder of three girls in the nearby city of Southport last year, an incident that caused days of disturbances, fed by online speculation about the attacker’s identity.
An ocular witness to the incident on Monday that gave his name when Chelsea told BBC Radio that the people packed on the street were only alerted about the danger for the cries of the crowd. That allowed some to jump from the road, since the driver showed no signs of deceleration.
“With the shock, that was the only reason why we looked up, and fortunately, we looked up and managed to jump (from) the way on time,” said the woman.
Liverpool won the trophy for the last time during the Covid pandemic when celebrations were not allowed due to blockages.
A Reuters witness said that before the incident, there was a disorder in the center of the city where the parade had to pass, overcrowded and spectators confused by the lack of signaling about street closures or where they should go.
“My thoughts are with all the injured or affected,” said Prime Minister Keir Starmer in X, qualifying the “frightening” scenes and saying that he was being updated on the events.
The team said in X that it was in direct contact with the police. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those that have been affected by this serious incident,” said Liverpool FC.
