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[st albans fox]

Thank god no fatalities at the time

sounds like 2 are v seriously injured 

not being treated as terrorism (although they said that about Southport at first) 

[Lionator]

2 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Thank god no fatalities at the time

sounds like 2 are v seriously injured 

not being treated as terrorism (although they said that about Southport at first) 

It’s a bit of an odd one. Will be interesting to see what comes out in the next few days, but as you say the most important thing is that nobody has been killed and it sounds like all will pull through. 

[SecretPro]

Fair bit more coming out now. Sounds like the driver might have been in some sort of altercation before hand, latest video shows a group of blokes trying to smash the car up before eventually putting the back window through. My guess is driver has panicked and flawed it to try and get away - clearly idiotic in a road full of pedestrians but this kind of thing has happened before. Awful no matter the circumstances. 

[worthosoriginals]

1 hour ago, Realist Guy In The Room said:

Seen quite a few people saying he doesn’t look 53 as if 53 is ancient.  Eminem is 52 and looks pretty much the same age as the pictures of this guy.

I doubt Eminem was the driver.

[Mark_w]

23 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

Fair bit more coming out now. Sounds like the driver might have been in some sort of altercation before hand, latest video shows a group of blokes trying to smash the car up before eventually putting the back window through. My guess is driver has panicked and flawed it to try and get away - clearly idiotic in a road full of pedestrians but this kind of thing has happened before. Awful no matter the circumstances. 

That video (before the people hit the car) shows the driver blindly reversing and nearly hitting people in the crowd (who then naturally react to that - some a bit too aggressively but it’s nowhere near sufficient to trigger the reaction it got). I think it’s far too lenient to the driver to ascribe the reaction to panic, when it looks very much like his impatience has created a situation that puts multiple people in danger in the first place and then - whatever the psychological process at play - has consciously accelerated into a crowd of hundreds of human beings. If you are prone to the level of panic or anger that it would take to do what he does here then there’s no way you should be driving a car.

[Jon the Hat]

Looks like he was drunk.  Times suggested as much.

[Trav Le Bleu]

7 hours ago, st albans fox said:

Thank god no fatalities at the time

sounds like 2 are v seriously injured 

not being treated as terrorism (although they said that about Southport at first) 

Terrorist don't generally toot their horn as they drive through a crowd.

[Trav Le Bleu]

7 hours ago, SecretPro said:

Fair bit more coming out now. Sounds like the driver might have been in some sort of altercation before hand, latest video shows a group of blokes trying to smash the car up before eventually putting the back window through. My guess is driver has panicked and flawed it to try and get away - clearly idiotic in a road full of pedestrians but this kind of thing has happened before. Awful no matter the circumstances. 

That's my take.

[Trav Le Bleu]

6 hours ago, worthosoriginals said:

I doubt Eminem was the driver.

Dunno, he seemed to lose himself.

[st albans fox]

1 hour ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Terrorist don't generally toot their horn as they drive through a crowd.

That’s probably true but they have been known to drive into crowds 

 

I was just making a point that in the past (across many incidents and not just in this country) authorities have made a statement that they don’t believe it to be terror related and then had to backtrack when more info came to light of the perpetrator.

 

Imo, anyone who does what this fella did, be it sober, drugged up or pissed, should be treated like a terrorist.  Only by pure luck has he not killed anyone. 

[Jon the Hat]

1 minute ago, st albans fox said:

That’s probably true but they have been known to drive into crowds 

 

I was just making a point that in the past (across many incidents and not just in this country) authorities have made a statement that they don’t believe it to be terror related and then had to backtrack when more info came to light of the perpetrator.

 

Imo, anyone who does what this fella did, be it sober, drugged up or pissed, should be treated like a terrorist.  Only by pure luck has he not killed anyone. 

Not every awful crime is terrorism.  It would require both planning AND a political angle.  This looks like an idiot who had a few drinks, drove the wrong way and managed to pick a fight with a whole crowd leading to an awful outcome.

[Mark_w]

3 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

That’s probably true but they have been known to drive into crowds 

 

I was just making a point that in the past (across many incidents and not just in this country) authorities have made a statement that they don’t believe it to be terror related and then had to backtrack when more info came to light of the perpetrator.

 

Imo, anyone who does what this fella did, be it sober, drugged up or pissed, should be treated like a terrorist.  Only by pure luck has he not killed anyone. 

There’s no political motivation here. And the police saying they don’t believe crimes to be terror related until they’ve found evidence to suggest that’s the case is exactly how it should work, evidence altering what they believe is not backtracking.

[StanSP]

1 hour ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Dunno, he seemed to lose himself.

Hope there's no guilty conscience. 

[st albans fox]

7 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Not every awful crime is terrorism.  It would require both planning AND a political angle.  This looks like an idiot who had a few drinks, drove the wrong way and managed to pick a fight with a whole crowd leading to an awful outcome.

I didn’t say it was ? 
I know terrorism has defined specifics 

just saying that I’d treat people who do things like this as I would a terrorist. 
 

4 minutes ago, Mark_w said:

There’s no political motivation here. And the police saying they don’t believe crimes to be terror related until they’ve found evidence to suggest that’s the case is exactly how it should work, evidence altering what they believe is not backtracking.

apparently so but they can’t have made exhaustive enquiries into the fella yet. Haven’t had time.
 

People seem a little over sensitive to a comment in parenthesis that I made which was factually correct. 
 

 terrorists are not racially defined - they come in all kinds of colours. 

Edited 27 May 2025 by st albans fox

[fox in the sox]

3 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Not every awful crime is terrorism.  It would require both planning AND a political angle.  This looks like an idiot who had a few drinks, drove the wrong way and managed to pick a fight with a whole crowd leading to an awful outcome.

Apparently he reversed into somebody behind him who ended up on the ground in front of an ambulance. Maybe at that point he was reversing to get out of the pedestrian area but then panicked when he hit somebody. It does seem a bit extreme though to then start mowing so many people down.

[Mark_w]

3 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

I didn’t say it was ? 
I know terrorism has defined specifics 

just saying that I’d treat people who do things like this as I would a terrorist. 
 

apparently so but they can’t have made exhaustive enquiries into the fella yet. Haven’t had time.
 

People seem a little over sensitive to a comment in parenthesis that I made which was factually correct. 
 

 terrorists are not racially defined - they come in all kinds of colours. 

What is the problem with police saying they don’t believe an incident is terror related, if they currently have no evidence it is? Of course that might change as they undergo their investigation - but the alternative is essentially just leaving the door open for idiots on the internet to construct their own narrative with significantly less knowledge and evidence than the police already have (and in many cases then using that narrative to justify more criminal activity).

[Trav Le Bleu]

14 minutes ago, StanSP said:

Hope there's no guilty conscience. 

It'll depend on the way he lies.

[st albans fox]

1 minute ago, Mark_w said:

What is the problem with police saying they don’t believe an incident is terror related, if they currently have no evidence it is? Of course that might change as they undergo their investigation - but the alternative is essentially just leaving the door open for idiots on the internet to construct their own narrative with significantly less knowledge and evidence than the police already have (and in many cases then using that narrative to justify more criminal activity).

Jeez

theres nothing wrong with it 

 

if that’s what they believe then it’s the right thing to say. They got it out there quite quickly that the driver was middle aged and white in order to shut down the traditional narratives. (And they even got stick for doing that from those morons) 
but it’s not definitive so early into an investigation unless they have proof of another motive/explanation in which case they could make that public at the same time. 

[fox in the sox]

4 minutes ago, Mark_w said:

What is the problem with police saying they don’t believe an incident is terror related, if they currently have no evidence it is? Of course that might change as they undergo their investigation - but the alternative is essentially just leaving the door open for idiots on the internet to construct their own narrative with significantly less knowledge and evidence than the police already have (and in many cases then using that narrative to justify more criminal activity).

Agree. It is the right thing to put information out quickly to stop speculation. They described the person and said they had no reason at present to think it was terrorist related. I don’t know what the problem is.

[Trav Le Bleu]

21 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Not every awful crime is terrorism.  It would require both planning AND a political angle.  This looks like an idiot who had a few drinks, drove the wrong way and managed to pick a fight with a whole crowd leading to an awful outcome.

Indeed. And to make the point, which I'm sure you agree, nonetheless terrible.

 

I do think though that a terrorist would have driven faster and with more determination, almost certainly killing people.

 

Like you say, guy was just a moron and deserves to get a similar punishment.

[Trav Le Bleu]

4 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

Agree. It is the right thing to put information out quickly to stop speculation. They described the person and said they had no reason at present to think it was terrorist related. I don’t know what the problem is.

It is a bit "damned if you don't".

 

You say nothing, people assume it's terrorism, you say that it isn't it's, "what are they hiding?!"

[Lionator]

54 minutes ago, fox in the sox said:

Apparently he reversed into somebody behind him who ended up on the ground in front of an ambulance. Maybe at that point he was reversing to get out of the pedestrian area but then panicked when he hit somebody. It does seem a bit extreme though to then start mowing so many people down.

If he was drunk, that would probably explain it a bit more but still odd. 
 

I’ve seen some dark videos on the internet before and I really don’t think that was a person intent on killing people, obviously his sheer recklessness could’ve led us to that situation though. 

[Fox92]

1 hour ago, fox in the sox said:

Apparently he reversed into somebody behind him who ended up on the ground in front of an ambulance. Maybe at that point he was reversing to get out of the pedestrian area but then panicked when he hit somebody. It does seem a bit extreme though to then start mowing so many people down.

Panicked? You can watch the video on the BBC site, he's intentionally driving into groups of people. How has this turned into maybe the driver "panicked".

[fox in the sox]

3 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Panicked? You can watch the video on the BBC site, he's intentionally driving into groups of people. How has this turned into maybe the driver "panicked".

I agree that by the end of it he was intentionally driving into people unless he had a medical episode and didn’t know what he was doing. But to begin with there is quite a bit of footage of him either sitting stationary or moving forward and back which seems odd if the original intention is to ram into the crowds.

[SecretPro]

19 minutes ago, Fox92 said:

Panicked? You can watch the video on the BBC site, he's intentionally driving into groups of people. How has this turned into maybe the driver "panicked".

have you seen the earlier video's that were released last night though - before he started driving into anybody? He had clearly had some sort of altercation and as a result people were battering his car - then someone put his back window through - then he went on to do what he did. Nobody is suggesting its excusable in any way but there is clearly more here than meets the eye. Theres a voice clip doing the rounds that suggests he had come out of hooters and potentially got into some sort of fist fight before getting in his car.

Edited 27 May 2025 by SecretPro