Five dead after man drives into crowd in Guangzhou

• Driver rammed his car into pedestrians in Guangzhou, killing 5 people and wounding 13.
• Eyewitnesses say he deliberately drove into people waiting for traffic light.
• Video shows girl lying on the ground and her mother sobbing at her side.

A guy who rammed his car into pedestrians in Guangzhou, killing five people and wounding 13, has been detained by Chinese authorities.

Widespread public outcry over the incident has led many to accuse the man of purposefully picking on others.

Soon after the collision, the driver is seen in videos broadcast online stepping out of the vehicle and flinging bills into the air.

The 22-year-old guy is being held by police, who have also opened an enquiry.

In the southern city of 19 million people, the accident happened on Wednesday during the evening rush hour at a busy intersection.

“He deliberately drove into the people who were waiting for the traffic light. He rammed the car into them maliciously. After that, he made a U-turn and hit people again,” an eyewitness told local media outlet.

“He wasn’t driving too quickly, but some people couldn’t run away in time because they wouldn’t have known he was hitting people deliberately.”

A traffic police officer and his motorcycle were apparently also struck by the man’s vehicle, but the officer was able to flee.

In one widely shared video, a small girl is seen lying on the ground at the scene of the assault, and a woman who is reportedly her mother can be seen sobbing at her side.

Another eyewitness described the chaos of the aftermath on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. The person said that an hour after the incident, the site was still filled with ambulances and traffic police “and they had not moved all the injured and the bodies from the scene”.

“The scene was too tragic and I couldn’t bear seeing it. I felt so sad that I wanted to throw up whenever I heard the siren of the ambulance,” the person said.

The incident has sparked public anger, with many expressing sorrow that it happened in the lead-up to Chinese New Year, a time for family reunions.

“The victims could be a girl who dressed up meticulously to go on a date… It could be a food deliveryman who earned five yuan after rushing an order.

It could be a father who wanted to go home and have dinner with children. It could be a child who was happily shopping,” one Weibo user wrote.

Many questioned whether the man came from a wealthy and prominent family after noticing that he was throwing money into the air and driving a nice car.

On Weibo on Wednesday, the incident swiftly gained popularity. However, it afterwards vanished from the list of “hot searches,” prompting users to accuse the platform of censorship.

Similar recent occurrences exist. Three persons were killed and nine others were hurt when a mini truck driver rammed into pedestrians in the southern province of Fujian in February 2022.

An disagreement with workers led a hotel visitor in Shanghai earlier this week to purposefully drive his automobile into the lobby. That incident didn’t result in any injuries.

Also Read

3 students from Charles Page High School died in a car accident at Sand Springs Lake

Charles Page High School students were on their way to lunch, police...