Multiple injuries, FDNY says they transported 13 to the hospital. No word on whether there are any fatalities. (Update - one of the injured has died.) It was a small red Honda Accord 4-door sedan. It's atop a traffic barricade thing that separates the Times Square pedestrian mall area, tilted towards its side at about a 45 degree angle. The front is all bashed in. A witness says that the engine was smoking and burst into flame. The driver is in custody. Witnesses say that the car was going much faster than gridlocked traffic, and may have been going counter to traffic on a one-way street. Then it intentionally steered up on the sidewalk crammed with pedestrians around noon hour. NYPD is saying it doesn't look like terrorism, it's a 26 year old Bronx male with a history of arrests. Another report says that the driver was a robbery suspect who was trying to evade pursuit.
The driver has been identified as a 26 year old from the Bronx named Richard Rojas. The stuff about a robbery and a chase seems to be false. Rojas told the police that he drove into the pedestrians intentionally because he wanted to kill people. There are photos in the news story below of Rojas after he got out of his crashed car and started jumping up and down, screaming and grimacing. A NYPD cop who happened to be in the crowd, a nearby traffic officer and a parole officer who was also in the crowd combined to take the crazy guy down and cuffed him. Rojas apparently wanted the police to shoot him in a suicide-by-cop. He doesn't appear to have been drunk but he's being tested for drugs since the cops said he looked high on something. The dead pedestrian has been identified as an 18 year old girl from Michigan, visiting NY as a tourist with her family and her boyfriend. http://nypost.com/2017/05/18/times-square-maniac-told-cops-i-wanted-to-kill-them/ http://nypost.com/2017/05/18/raging-driver-tried-to-flee-scene-of-fatal-crash/
this proves it. of course, the universe was such a good design like my old dodge that broke down once a week. and just the same, all the mayhem, every form of evil and stupidity and insanity (which is ironicly one of the few consistencies in life you can count on) happens all around the globe every second, every minute, every hour on the hour, you can't possibly cram it all in the news. it should be so proud. we should worship it too. that way, we won't notice it's insane by pretending.
Normally avoiding participating in any such stuff, but was struck with the eerie parallel to an earlier incident here in Oz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Melbourne_car_attack The rest of the world tend to ape what happens first in US, but in this case 'inspiration' may have went the other way.
