Joe Harker
A security expert has said there are 'serious questions to be asked' over the recent incident in Liverpool where a car drove into a crowd of people who had turned out for the Premier League title parade.
Liverpool FC took a bus tour parade around the city centre, and thousands of people lined the streets to cheer them on, but at around 6pm on 26 May, a car ploughed into crowds of people, injuring around 50 people, of which 11 currently remain in hospital.
The emergency services arrived on the scene soon afterwards and arrested 'a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area' who Merseyside Police have said they believe was the driver.
It has since been confirmed that he was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and driving while unfit through drugs.
Police have said they are not treating the incident as terrorism, and Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotherham said that revealing the suspect's ethnicity and nationality was 'absolutely the right thing to do' as he said 'nefarious groups trying to stir up some speculation' were active within minutes.
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Two people were seriously injured due to the car attack, one of them a child, and security expert Will Geddes told LADbible that there were 'some serious questions that still need to be answered' over what happened.
"When you have a large parade or a procession where you have the Liverpool FC team moving through so those supporters can get to see them, they'll be moving along a predesignated route," the security expert explained.
"But in addition to that route and securing that route to prevent people crossing the line, stopping the bus, whatever it might be, where you're going to have obviously uniformed police presence, you do need to look at all the access and egress points by which the supporters, the attendees, the members of the general public will be getting to that procession route.
"Now, where it seems to have failed is that, obviously there was a vehicle that was able to go down Water Street.
"That is one of the roads that one would presume should have been cordoned off to prevent a vehicle going into it, because you'd have a large overspill of members of the general public either arriving or leaving by that that particular point.
"Now, this is where the concern is, how did this vehicle manage to get in there?"
Geddes' concerns are evidently shared by Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotherham, who said there was a 'big question' over how the car was able to drive into crowds of people during the title parade.
The mayor said: "Water Street was not a route where vehicles were supposed to be using it, it was blocked off.
"At this end of it, which is the direction that it was coming in, towards The Strand, there were literally hundreds of thousands of people here, so no vehicle would have got through anyway.
"The questions, I suppose, are legitimate, but we have to give the police the time to conclude their investigations, which is what they’re doing."
The site has been cordoned off by the emergency services and Jenny Sims, Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police said in a press conference today (27 May) that a car got through after a roadblock had been lifted to make way for an ambulance that was going to help a man suffering a suspected heart attack.
She said 'a robust traffic management plan was in place', adding: "It is believed the driver of the Ford Galaxy car involved in this incident was able to follow an ambulance onto Water Street after the roadblock was temporarily lifted so that the ambulance crew could attend to a member of the public who was having a suspected heart attack."
Sims added that those still in hospital all appeared to be 'recovering'.
The security expert added that police would be investigating the arrested man himself in an attempt to work out his motive, explaining: "They'll be looking at his digital footprint. They'll be looking through his devices. They will be speaking to his neighbours.
"They'll be talking to anybody that they can determine as a close associate, or someone that he works with, to try and get some sort of barometer on who this guy is.
"What he’s about, you know, what was his disposition recently? What is his disposition generally?"
Geddes also praised the rapid response from the emergency services in getting to the scene and taking control of the situation mere minutes after they were first alerted.
He said: "One of the things that was one of the positives that we can possibly draw from the horrible incident that happened yesterday was that the response by the police and the emergency services was incredibly quick, and would appear to be very efficient, certainly in terms of reacting to a pretty devastating scenario."
He also explained that incidents such as the 2017 Manchester Arena bombings and the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 meant the emergency services had learned to 'join up super quick when it comes to a triage on an event' and develop an effective response.