Delivery truck rampage in New York: one dead, several injured
Police vehicles are parked around a truck in Brooklyn.
© Those: John Minchillo/AP/dpa
In the Brooklyn borough of New York, a man steered his van into a group of cyclists and scooter riders, killing at least one person. Four others were injured. After a mile-long chase through Brooklyn, police managed to block the car and bring it to a stop. The driver was arrested. His son later identified him in an interview with the AP news agency as a 62-year-old with mental health problems who had already been behind bars for acts of violence.
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In Bay Ridge, a vibrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, dramatic scenes played out for more than 45 minutes on Monday (local time): A truck drove through the area and hit nine people on bicycles and scooters in various places. Those affected were between 30 and 66 years old and all men, one of whom was a police officer. A 44-year-old suffered a serious head injury and later died.
After ramming the victims, the driver of the van drove in a zigzag course onto a freeway, and the police gave chase. The chase ended when a squad car blocked his path and blocked the van near the entrance to a Brooklyn-Manhattan tunnel. Authorities examined the vehicle to make sure it had not loaded any explosives.
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The New York police chief Keechant Sewell spoke of “violent riots”, but ruled out a terrorist background. Stephen S., 30, told the AP the man behind the wheel was his father. He has been mentally ill for a long time and has lived in Las Vegas until recently. There it was learned from court documents that he was convicted of several acts of violence, including a knife attack on his brother. “Very often he decides not to take his medication and then does something like that,” Stephen S. said of his father.
The incident occurred at the beginning of the punitive phase of the trial of an Islamic extremist who ran over eight people with a truck in 2017. The accused faces the death penalty.
RND/AP