(This one is still developing, so by the time you read this the numbers may already be off - MD)
Royal Motorcade: Four Dead As Car Hits Crowd
At least four people are reported to have been killed and around 13 hurt in The Netherlands after a car careered into spectators watching a royal motorcade.
People were flung through the air after the car swerved across police railings
A photographer said the small car appeared to be deliberately driving at high speed toward an open-top bus carrying Queen Beatrix and her family in the western Dutch town of Apeldoorn.
As I said above, this is still developing (anyone out there who's ever been a first-responder knows that 5-hours can pass in a flash and is not enough time to sort things out) and the casualty-count jumped by 2 while I was reading - there is nothing more known in any specific way other than that this has happened.
That said...
Within-the-fold, you'll find some stills and a link to a video shot as-it-happened (they're disturbing - one of the victims is apparently a little girl - , so don't click-in unless you're sure).
Link to the Video
[Click HERE to see the visuals.]
A couple of points:
1) As is plain by the pics and video - that car was moving fast (enough so that the front was already smashed-in when it ran through the last spectators and into the statue on the corner)
2) Holiday/Government-Event-Motorcades operate pretty much the same way everywhere - slowly, and with a great effect on travel-speed of the surrounding roads.
Based on these two data-points, I'm going to have to agree with the above-quoted photographer and say that this had to have been deliberate - there simply would have been no opportunity for that kind of speed otherwise.
So what you've got is a lone male, approximately in his mid-to-late 20s, who made a 'kamikaze run' at the Dutch Queen's motorcade bus, through a crowd.
That may not be quite enough to assign blame to the Netherlands' recent Geert-Wilders-and-Spreading-Islamic-Violence problem...*definitively*.
But, if I were a betting man...
- MuscleDaddy
Muscle Daddy, I'd like to point out another point, if you don't mind.
ReplyDelete3) Take away the guns and the psychos will use other weapons. What's the grain count on a sub-compact car, anyway?
I don't know...
ReplyDeleteNot that I couldn't do the math, mind you - it's just that when I try, my mind automatically creates a 3D model of the resulting bullet... then I start to envision the gun necessary to fire it... and then I get all distracted.
- MD
Okay. Time to ban all assault cars. /sarc, for those who don't know me well enough. 8-)
ReplyDeleteThat's the first thing that came to my mind when I first heard this story.
ReplyDelete"I wonder what group this "Yut" self-identified with?"