Chaos, confusion and panic as driver ploughs through Liverpool crowd
Many spectators attending Liverpool’s victory parade thought it was an accident when a van drove through the crowd, until the driver put his foot down.
At about 6pm, a small group of Liverpool fans remonstrated with the driver of a dark grey people carrier who had just swerved into some people attending the club’s Premier League victory parade.
The supporters were demanding from the driver, “what are you doing?” when suddenly he reversed a few feet, before juddering forwards, beeping his horn and then setting off at the hordes of people in front of him.
A horrified bystander, clad in a Liverpool flag, tried to grab the driver’s side-door handle and the door briefly opened before the driver slammed it shut, continuing to accelerate the car.
Moments earlier there had been scenes of jubilation; they quickly broke into confusion and panic.
Harry Rashid, 48, from Solihull in the West Midlands, was at the parade with his wife and two young daughters when he witnessed the crowd in Water Street being hit “pop, pop, pop” off the driver’s bonnet. He said: “The parade had just finished and the [open-top victory parade] bus had just passed us. I saw this vehicle adjacent and it ploughed into a few people and then came to a stop.
“There was a lot of confusion, a lot of screams. I saw people around me trying to surge towards the car and trying to smash the windows.
“At that stage, I assumed it had accidentally gone into the crowd and in fact my thoughts were for the driver and the people attacking him.
“But then he put his foot down and kind of drove through the crowd. He surged through dozens and dozens; hundreds of us were there. He just went straight through the crowd.
“He carried on going and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We saw lots of people injured. It was very distressing. My daughter started crying.”
Chelsea Yuen was walking down Water Street, which was “jam-packed like sardines”, with her friend Francesca and her three-year-old daughter when she heard beeping and saw the vehicle speeding at her.
The Liverpool team’s victory buses had started their 17-kilometre celebration route earlier in the day, winding their way through the streets, and as the journey neared its end the crowd was in full swell.
Yuen grabbed the hand of her friend, who was also holding her daughter’s hand, and the three jumped out of the car’s way, narrowly avoiding it as it sped past at about 50 kilometres an hour.
She said: “As it went past, we could see all the windows smashed in, with people chasing down the car.
“There were prams in the street and kids everywhere. It’s a family celebration, so it’s shocking what’s happened.”
Yuen told Sky News that if the car had not been beeping, she would have been unaware of its presence and it would have hit her. She said: “I don’t understand why the car was beeping going through the crowd if it was trying to hit people. If it hadn’t been beeping, it would’ve hit us.”
Matt Cole, a BBC reporter who was at the parade with his family, said: “It just wasn’t stopping. I managed to grab my daughter who was with me and jump out of the way. It missed myself and my family by literally inches. We then turned and watched what happened momentarily behind us before running.”
After the car stopped, police and members of the crowd surrounded it.
Another witness, who gave her name as Kirstie, from Bradford, said in the aftermath: “People were trying to turn the car over. People were under it. Instinct is to lift the car over. I’ll never get that image out of my head.”
People lay injured as emergency service workers treated them. There were walking wounded and people being taken away on stretchers.
By 6.55pm, Water Street and Dale Street had been closed off as a crime scene. Owing to the huge numbers in the crowd – estimated at one million people – there was already a high presence of emergency workers in the area.
Police medics with backpacks containing were rushed in, as well as search and rescue teams. The emergency services were trying to help the afflicted while also preserving the crime scene.
At 8pm, police and ambulance services were treating people at the Mowgli restaurant. Another witness, Maddra, who was walking with his friends, said he saw a car “speeding up” and hit pedestrians.
He said “the car turned left, mounted the pavement, came towards us and ran towards the buildings”, adding: “We got out of the way and it was speeding up.”
Natasha Rinaldi, who was watching the parade from her friend’s living room, told Sky News: “It was so loud. People sounded desperate. And then we looked out the window and we saw the car run over people.
“Then people started rushing to go after the driver and they tried to break the car. The police did everything to block and to push people away. We could just hear screams and screams.”
Twenty-seven people were taken to hospital with injuries, four of them children. Two, including one child, are thought to have been seriously hurt.
Police said last night (Monday) that it was not being treated as terrorism.
The Times
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