Several people were injured in New York when they were run over, apparently intentionally, by a truck whose driver was arrested shortly after.
“We don’t know why at this time, but it was not an accident,” Councilman Justin Brannan, who represents the area of south Brooklyn where the incident took place, said on Twitter.
According to police sources quoted by local media, there are at least four injured and one of them was transferred in critical condition to a nearby hospital.
The accident took place around 11:00 a.m. local time (4:00 p.m. GMT) on an avenue in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the truck invaded the sidewalk and hit several people.
The driver fled aboard the vehicle and was pursued by police units, who managed to arrest him approximately 30 minutes later after a chase.
According to local media, the arrested man is 62 years old and has no criminal record, although he had had an episode with the Police in 2019 due to apparent mental health problems, says the New York Post.
The newspaper The New York Times points out that police officers tried to stop the truck around 10:50 local time (15:50 GMT) and that the driver tried to evade them and it was just after he ran over people.
For now, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has not offered official information about the event.
New York Mayor Eric Adams’ office said via Twitter that the NYPD was still investigating and that there are “no additional credible threats at this time” once the suspect has been detained.
The truck, a small vehicle from the rental company U-Haul, was being examined by agents, including bomb specialists.
The outrage took place just on the day the final phase of the trial against Sayfullo Saipov began, the man convicted of the terrorist attack that in 2017 cost the lives of eight people, including five Argentines, in New York.
Saipov, who used a rental truck to run over cyclists on a bike path, has already been convicted and a jury must now decide whether he should receive life in prison or the death penalty.
For now, in today’s event, a possible terrorist motivation has not been pointed out.
