Albany,NY : US veteran kills one in Times Square car crash, 22 hurt on may, Wednesday 17th 2017

A US Navy veteran plowed his car into pedestrians in New York City’s packed Times Square yesterday, killing an 18-year-old woman and injuring 22 people. The city’s mayor said there was no indication it was an act of terrorism.

Witnesses said 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.

Police who took the driver into custody identified him as Richard Rojas, 26, from the New York City borough of the Bronx. They said he 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.

A source for the New York Police Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters Rojas was believed to have been under the influence of some intoxicating substance at the time of yesterday’s incident, but preliminary test results for alcohol came back negative.

ABC News cited unidentified police sources as saying Rojas had apparently been high on synthetic marijuana.

Rojas was taken to Bellevue Hospital rather than to the city’s central booking facility after being detained at a police precinct on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and he was unlikely to be arraigned on formal charges before Friday, according to Reuters’ police source.

There was no indication that the incident was an act of terrorism, Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference at the scene.


Source :
US veteran kills one in Times Square car crash, 22 hurt