Oct 31, 2017: At least seven people have been killed in New York after the driver of a truck mowed down people on a cycle path in Lower Manhattan. A man who emerged from the vehicle brandishing imitation guns was shot and arrested by police officers.
Police urged people to avoid the area as a major emergency services operation got under way. US police describe the incident as a terror attack, with reports saying the FBI is now leading the investigation. New York City’s mayor and New York state’s governor are at the scene.
One witness, identified as “Eugene,” told ABC Channel 7 that he saw a white pick-up truck driving fast down the cycle path alongside the West Side Highway, near Stuyvesant High School, at full speed and hitting a number of people. He also reported hearing about nine or 10 shots.
Another witness, Carina, was picking up her son from a nearby school. She told local TV station WCBS-TV: “I could see a lot of smoke and as I got to the corner that’s when I started seeing people on the west side highway hitting the ground and I saw this guy… I don’t know what he was holding.
“It looked like one of those air guns in a weird way. I didn’t know what it was but he was definitely aiming it and it was right there, right by the school.
“So immediately everyone just started screaming ‘shooting! shooting!’ and we all ran. We ran as fast as we could and everyone was scrambling to get their child and scrambling to get into the cafeteria.”
-BBC