A car has plowed through a Christmas parade in Waukesha Wisconsin, causing more than 20 injuries as well as fatalities. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Police said that 11 adults and 12 children were taken to hospitals but there is no word on confirmed deaths. The red SUV drove through the crowds and struck many people. Reports of shots fired were confirmed but it was from police officers trying to stop the incident, with nobody hit by the gunfire. At least one suspect is in custody while the vehicle has been recovered. No motive for the incident has been released.
My Comment:
This is a breaking news story and as such the information here might be out of date fairly quickly. There is a lot of video of this incident on social media but because of the terms of service I am not going to be reposting anything here. There are live updates from both local and national sources.
It is unclear if this was a deliberate planned attack or something else. Though I don't think it matters too much, even if this wasn't a deliberate attack a lot of people are hurt, traumatized and even dead. It's a terrible thing regardless.
One of the rumors that I have heard on social media was that this incident was not a planned attack but was instead someone fleeing from a crime. If true that means this attack is even worse since instead of some political cause or terrorism plot this was just some guys trying to escape the police. Killing multiple people and injuring even more, including a bunch of children and elderly people just because you don't want to go to prison is horrible.
It is possible that this was an planned attack. After all, ISIS pulled off a lot of these style of attacks before, most notably in Nice, France. Car ramming attacks have become depressively common so it's very possible that this attack is a copycat.
As for motive, who knows? It could be anything at this point and like I said before the rumor is that this wasn't an attack at all. But I think everyone is thinking that this could be a retaliation for the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. After all that happened in Wisconsin (in the same general area as well) and the suspects are black. Rittenhouse was defamed and called a white supremacist (even though he isn't and only shot white people), so I guess it is possible that this was some kind of demented revenge. And I guess it's also possible that it was an ISIS inspired terror attack as well.
I personally don't know if this was an attack or not. Watching the videos it did seem like the driver was avoiding people at first. Indeed, there was a scary video of the SUV driving right by a small girl that he could have easily hit. It was only when the vehicle was blocked by a marching band that he started to run people over. That makes me think that the incident was not a deliberate attack.
Regardless, even if it wasn't an attack, they need to throw the book at this person. If it was an attack, the reasons are obvious. But if it was not, it was one of the most selfish things I have ever seen. The driver didn't try to honk his horn to get people to move or get them out of the way, he didn't stop when he was hitting people and he fled the scene of the crime. I hope he never gets out of jail (assuming he acted alone).
I have to say that I always though these kinds of events were extremely vulnerable to attacks. Though police were on the scene they were not able to stop the attack. The barriers that they had didn't do a thing to stop the driver and once that happened there wasn't much they could do to prevent the casualties. That is true for most parades that don't have some kind of concrete barrier. Plus, since this guy came from behind and people were playing loud music, there was no warning for the victims until the music stopped and people started screaming.
Finally, it is very strange for me to be writing about my home state. I don't live in that part of the state, but I do know people in the area and I was briefly worried that someone I knew might have been injured or killed. I think everyone is fine but the fact that I was even was thinking about that makes this case a lot more personal than most of these kinds of incidents...
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