UK rules out terrorism in Liverpool car-ramming, seeks to cool speculation

British police say they do not suspect terrorism after arresting a 53-year-old British man who plowed a minivan through crowds in Liverpool during a Premier League title parade.

Liverpool City Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram says four of the 47 people injured are “very, very ill in hospital.”

Merseyside Police say they are not looking for other suspects. The force has not identified the arrested driver, but were quick to identify the driver as a “white British man from the Liverpool area.”

Former police officers and local politicians say authorities had sought to cool social media speculation that the episode was an Islamist attack.

“That was one of my first concerns, that we needed to get the story out quickly,” Rotheram tells the BBC. “If there’s a vacuum, we know there are some elements that will try to inflame the situation and to create that speculation and to put misinformation out there.”

Hundreds of thousands of Liverpudlians had crammed the streets of the port city in northwest England on Monday to celebrate the team winning England’s Premier League this season for a record-tying 20th top-flight title.

As the parade was wrapping up, a minivan turned into a street just off the parade route and plowed into the sea of fans wrapped in their red Liverpool scarves, jerseys and other memorabilia. A video on social media shows the van strike a man, tossing him in the air, before veering into a larger crowd, where it plowed a path through the group and pushed bodies along the street before coming to a stop.

“It was extremely fast,” says Harry Rashid, who was with his wife and two young daughters as the minivan passed by them. “Initially, we just heard the pop, pop, pop of people just being knocked off the bonnet of a car.”

Rashid says the crowd charged the halted vehicle and began smashing windows.

“But then he put his foot down again and just plowed through the rest of them, he just kept going,” Rashid says. “It was horrible. And you could hear the bumps as he was going over the people.”