NEW YORK: Navy veteran ploughs car into crowd, kills 1, injures 22

Tragedy struck at the Times Square in New York when a US Navy veteran ploughed his car into pedestrians, killing an 18-year-old woman and injured 22 others.

According to eyewitnesses, the motorist mounted the sidewalk in a burgundy Honda sedan and sped along for more than three city blocks, knocking people over before the car struck a pole and came to rest at 45th Street and Broadway in Midtown Manhattan.

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The incident according to the city’s mayor showed no indication that it was an act of terrorism even as the driver identified as Richard Rojas, 26, from the New York City borough of the Bronx has been taken into police custody.

Rojas according to a New York Police Department source who pleaded anonymity was believed to have been under the influence of some intoxicating substance at the time of Thursday’s incident, but preliminary test results for alcohol came back negative.

According to police report, Rojas had been arrested twice for drunken driving, in 2008 and 2015, and once earlier this month on a charge of menacing for threatening another man with a knife.

 

 

 

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