A Sunday in the sign of the party transformed into a nightmare, with the shadow – for seven hours – of an attack, of a racial revenge that turned out to be an absurd fatality: driving the red Ford SUV, which fell in the middle of a parade musical, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, thirty kilometers from Milwaukee, would have been a 39-year-old African American, fleeing from another place, where a stabbing had probably occurred.
Use: car crashes into parade, nightmare Sunday in Waukesha
Darrell Brooks, a long list of precedents, including violence and drug dealing, had been released from prison just two days ago. His car ended up on the procession animated by young and old who played and danced. After avoiding the last in line, Brooks left again, overwhelming dozens of people.
The videos taken by witnesses, and posted on social networks, have multiplied the horror on the net. The provisional toll is 5 dead and at least 40 injured. Twenty-eight people were taken to hospital, 12 are children. A video shows a child dancing in the street as the SUV whizzes by a few meters away, before hitting parade attendees a few hundred meters away. “There were pompoms, shoes and spilled hot chocolate everywhere. I had to go from body to body to find my daughter, ”Corey Montiho, a Waukesha School District council member, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “My wife and two daughters were touched,” he added.
The tragedy had sparked many hypotheses, including revenge after the acquittal, also in Wisconsin, of Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who shot two people to death a year ago, and wounded a third, all three demonstrators of a march against police violence. The right-wing Fox News network had fueled the racial lead, insistently asking why the driver’s name hadn’t been given hours later. The White House had issued a statement saying it was “monitoring” the situation.
The fear was of a ripple effect that could set the country on fire. In reality the police were trying to figure out if Brooks had acted alone or was with others. Identification of the suspect was quick. The car was tracked down shortly after the impact. The front was completely destroyed. In the evening, after the order to lock up the area was given, and the school was closed for Monday, the police revealed the track, still being examined, of the runaway criminal who accidentally ended up on the parade.