REUTERS/Jeremy Schultz
At least one person has died after a speeding car allegedly rammed into a crowd of pedestrians in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday, Reuters reports. The news agency said at least 12 victims received medical treatment on the scene. Social media posts showed a crashed red sedan on the sidewalk, and at one point the car was in flames. A 26-year-old man from the Bronx was in police custody on Thursday afternoon, according to local reports. He has a history of DWI arrests and license suspensions. The area has been closed off by the New York Police Department, who have said the incident is not related to terrorism. According to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, President Trump has been briefed on the situation and is receiving updates as they come in.
Times Square has seen its share of tragedy and close calls. In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan, planted a homemade car bomb that could have killed thousands of people, but failed to detonate. Recent years’ violence has included stabbings outside of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and the police shooting of a man wielding an 11-inch knife near an area teeming with pedestrians. In March, Baltimore native James Harris Jackson, 28, planned a murder spree targeting black men there, but turned himself into police at the Times Square subway after the single murder of a homeless man in Hell’s Kitchen.