A car ploughed into a crowd of Liverpool FC enthusiasts during a celebratory parade for their Premier League soccer title at the Liverpool area of Merseyside in England on Monday (May 26).

Forty-seven people were injured, with 27 of them being hospitalised, including four children, with one child and one adult in a serious condition.

Twenty people with minor injuries were treated at the scene, as they did not need hospital treatment. Four people trapped under the vehicle had to be released by firefighters. One paramedic on a bike was also struck but not seriously injured.

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A 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area was arrested just after 6 pm British Standard time. Police say he is believed to have been the driver of the vehicle.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the scenes as “appalling,” saying that his thoughts are with all those injured or affected. He also thanked the emergency personnel for their swift action and mentioned that he is actively following the investigation.

People thrown in the air

Gruesome videos on social media showed people thrown into the air as the car rammed into spectators.

According to eyewitnesses, the car stopped after initially hitting some of the victims. One eye-witness Rashid said people then charged towards the vehicle, smashing its windows, and the driver kept going, hitting scores of others.

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When the car stopped, angry fans converged on it and began smashing the windows as police officers intervened to prevent them from reaching the driver. An eyewitness to the incident who gave her name as Chelsea told BBC Radio that people packed onto the street were only alerted to the danger by screams from the crowd. That enabled some to jump out of the way as the driver showed no sign of slowing down.

Incident not treated as terrorism

The police said they believe that the arrested driver was the only one involved.

“We believe this to be an isolated incident, and we are not currently looking for anyone else in relation to it. The incident is not being treated as terrorism,” temporary Deputy Chief Constable Jenny Sims told reporters.

Under standard protocol for mass casualties in Britain where a suspect’s motivation is unexplained, the counter-terror police will be involved in the investigation. Officials will be looking at the suspect’s profile and history, as well as evidence from interviews and examinations of phones and other electronic devices.

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The British police declare events to be terror attacks only if they are found to have met the legal definition of terrorism. That means the violence must be designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and be “for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.” But most of these attacks fall below this threshold.

Description released

Liam Robinson from Liverpool City Council spoke to the media saying that the incident “cast a very dark shadow over what had been a joyous day,” and paid tribute to the NHS staff and emergency services.

Police were unusually quick to give a description of the man they arrested, but Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent in London’s Metropolitan Police, told the BBC that this was an effort to cool social media speculation that the episode was an Islamist attack.

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The same police force oversaw the response to the murder of three young girls in the nearby town of Southport last year, an incident which sparked days of rioting, fuelled by speculation online over the identity of the attacker, and this could be the reason for the swift revelation of the attacker’s details, to ensure that any spread of misinformation is quashed before it begins.

Liverpool Premier League champions

Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered earlier in the day along a 10-mile parade route that wound through the city to celebrate the fact that Liverpool Football Club have won this year’s Premier League, the top-tier of English football, after defeating Tottenham Hotspurs.

With most people off work for the Spring Bank Holiday, hundreds of thousands of fans gathered to watch the Liverpool team and its staff travel through the city centre on an open-top bus. Dancing, scarf-and-flag-waving fans braved wet weather to line the streets and climb up traffic lights to get a view of Liverpool’s players who were atop two buses bearing the words “Ours Again”.

The hours-long procession — surrounded by a thick layer of police and security — crawled along a 16-km route and through a sea of red smoke and rain.

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The club has drawn supporters from across the world, and the latest championship victory was unexpected, coming in the first season under a new coach, Arne Slot.

Liverpool last won the trophy during the COVID pandemic when celebrations were not permitted due to the lockdowns.

‘Celebrate safely’

Hours earlier, the police department had urged people to celebrate safely.

“Please keep yourselves and other people safe during today’s #LFC Victory Parade by not climbing buildings, structures, scaffolding or street furniture,” the police said in a statement on social media. “The parade route covers 10 miles and there are plenty of safe vantage points to see the LFC bus. Hope everyone has a great day!”

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That celebratory mood was shattered in the afternoon by this terrible accident.

The Liverpool FC team said on X that it was in direct contact with the police. In a statement on Monday evening, the club said, “Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been affected by this serious incident. We will continue to offer our full support to the emergency services and local authorities who are dealing with this incident.”

Several similar incidents

This is the latest in a series of crimes, where people have driven cars into a packed crowd.

In February, a man drove a car into a crowd 10 days before the Chancellor elections in Munich, Germany, injuring dozens of people. A month earlier, a man deliberately drove a pickup into crowds on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens of others.

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Another shocking incident was that of a driver barrelling a large truck for more than a mile through a crowd of spectators on Bastille Day in Nice, France, in 2016, killing scores of people.