In what British authorities are investigating as a terror attack, a man drove his car at high speed onto a sidewalk Tuesday, injuring three people before crashing into a barrier at the Houses of Parliament.
Police say the suspect, who is not believed to be previously known by authorities, is refusing to cooperate after driving his Ford Fiesta into a group of pedestrians and cyclists who were waiting on the sidewalk for the traffic light to change.
“Rooftop camera footage shows the car mounting a pavement on the wrong side of the road before, witnesses said, it travelled at up to 50mph for around 40 metres (130ft) and hit a bollard,” The Independent reports.
The suspect, who is in his late 20s, was taken into custody around 7:30 a.m. on the suspicion of terrorism offenses. The Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit is handling the investigation.
“It appears to have been a deliberate act, but what the motive was we can’t answer at the moment,” counter-terrorism official Neil Basu told reporters Tuesday. “We haven’t formally identified the suspect, but we don’t believe he’s known to MI5.”
The unit is currently investigating whether the suspected terrorist was working alone or with a wider terror cell. Police have confirmed that no one else was in the vehicle.
The Sun quotes eyewitness Jason Williams describing what he believes was a “planned” and “sinister” attack. “He went into the bollard at high speed, about 40 or 50 mph,” said Williams. “It was, in my opinion, something planned and something very sinister.”
Another witness described the suspect driving “on the wrong side,” plowing into the pedestrians, then having “swerved over towards the safety barrier and then accelerated and hit it at quite high speed.”
“He hit about five cyclists. One actually got up and began to chase the car,” said the witness. “It was frightening.”
This isn’t the first time Parliament has been attacked. In March 2017, five people were killed, including the attacker, and dozens were injured after an Islamic terrorist plowed a vehicle into pedestrians, then stabbed a policeman.
“The location of this attack was no accident,” Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement. “The terrorist chose to strike at the heart of our capital city, where people of all nationalities, religions and cultures come together to celebrate the values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech.”