Police continue questioning suspected driver of car that ploughed into crowd in Liverpool
Welcome to our continued live coverage after a car ploughed into a crowd at Liverpool’s Premier League victory parade on Bank Holiday Monday.
Merseyside Police said there was a total of 65 confirmed casualties following the incident in Water Street.
More than 50 people, including children, were treated in different hospitals and 11 people remained there on Tuesday in a stable condition. There were no “major traumas” or life-threatening injuries among the victims, medical staff at Royal Liverpool university hospital said.
The alleged driver of the car, a 53-year-old British man, from the West Derby area of Liverpool, has been arrested on suspicion of drug driving and attempted murder and is being interviewed in custody.
Police say the man was also being detained on suspicion of dangerous driving and driving while unfit through drugs.
Detectives have been given additional time to question the man until around lunchtime on Wednesday. The incident is not being treated as terrorism.
Merseyside’s assistant chief constable Jenny Sims told a press conference:
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 road block was temporarily lifted so that the ambulance crew could attend to a member of the public who was having a heart attack.
Key events
Water Street opens as normal after clean up following Liverpool parade collision
Water Street in Liverpool, where the the incident occurred, was open as normal on Wednesday morning, with traffic travelling down towards The Strand.
Police tents put in place in the road after Monday’s car ramming incident had gone, and bottles, cans and scarves left on the ground had been cleared away.
A Liverpool flag remained on top of traffic lights and some remnants of police incident tape could be seen on signposts and in a bin, the PA news agency reports.
Here is an extract from our interview with former superintendent Dal Babu, who welcomed the decision to name the ethnicity and nationality of the suspect in the Liverpool incident, but said doing so in future could raise challenges for forces going forward.
Babu stressed the decision had been “correct” to share the information on this occasion to combat “racist and Islamophobic misinformation” on social media, while warning that every decision should be taken on a case by case basis.
“You could imagine a situation where the far right will say, ‘Oh, you haven’t named the ethnicity of this person and that’s because they are a person of colour’,” he said.
“It’s really important that people don’t see it as a precedent because every incident will be different. People may feel in a future incident that they’re entitled to know the ethnicity and race, and it may not be appropriate to release it,” he said.
A senior legal source said there could be circumstances where naming the ethnicity of a suspect could cause riots rather than quell them.
“What will a force do if they arrest someone in similar circumstances who is recently arrived on a small boat or who has a clearly Muslim name? They will now be under huge pressure to name them,” the source said.
Suspect’s personal details should be released earlier more often, Met police chief says
The head of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley, has been speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about Merseyside police’s decision to quickly reveal the ethnicity and nationality of the alleged driver.
Rowley said that going forward “we would always have to be more transparent in terms of the data we release” when possible, although this depends on the nature of the investigation, as some cases are more legally sensitive than others.
He was then asked to respond to comments made by Dal Babu, a former senior Met officer, who told the Guardian he could envisage pressure being applied to forces in future to release details on the racial background of suspects.
“It doesn’t take rocket science to predict what will happen: the far right will twist this and say, ‘right, you’ve named [the race] because it’s a white person. Why aren’t you naming [the race of] the next person?’ And it will present some difficulties and challenges to the police”, Babu said.
BBC News presenter Amol Rajan also put it to Rowley that naming the ethnicity of the suspect may create a certain precedent so in cases when police don’t divulge such information conspiracy theories will grow rampant.
Rowley responded:
In general, I think we have to be realistic and more often put more personal details in public earlier.
I think the reason for that, I think it creates all sorts of practical problems and Dal is very thoughtful in what he’s saying, and I don’t disagree with his concerns, but we’re in such an age of citizen journalism, people have screenshots, phones… some content will be all over social media very, very quickly. People will be making guesses and inferences.
I think in that world putting more facts out is the only way to deal with it. And if those facts generate some emboldened racists on some cases, then we need to confront those individuals.
But I think trying to avoid truths, when half the truth is in the public domain is going to be quite difficult going forward.
“Were police in Liverpool and Merseyside right to release the ethnicity of the suspect that attacked fans at that parade?”@amolrajan asks Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) May 28, 2025
There has been talk around Merseyside Police’s unusual decision to publicly release the ethnicity (white) and nationality (British) of the alleged driver of the car that ploughed into football fans during Liverpool’s Premier League victory parade on Monday.
Merseyside police said they arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area about two hours after the incident that left dozens of people, including four children, injured.
The decision shows lessons may have been learned in the wake of the Southport attacks last year, when speculation about the identity of the suspect behind the stabbings had been rampant on social media and filled a void left by Merseyside police releasing few details about the 17-year-old they had in custody.
Usually when a suspect is arrested, police forces in England and Wales only reveal the person’s age and where they were arrested.
Police continue questioning suspected driver of car that ploughed into crowd in Liverpool
Welcome to our continued live coverage after a car ploughed into a crowd at Liverpool’s Premier League victory parade on Bank Holiday Monday.
Merseyside Police said there was a total of 65 confirmed casualties following the incident in Water Street.
More than 50 people, including children, were treated in different hospitals and 11 people remained there on Tuesday in a stable condition. There were no “major traumas” or life-threatening injuries among the victims, medical staff at Royal Liverpool university hospital said.
The alleged driver of the car, a 53-year-old British man, from the West Derby area of Liverpool, has been arrested on suspicion of drug driving and attempted murder and is being interviewed in custody.
Police say the man was also being detained on suspicion of dangerous driving and driving while unfit through drugs.
Detectives have been given additional time to question the man until around lunchtime on Wednesday. The incident is not being treated as terrorism.
Merseyside’s assistant chief constable Jenny Sims told a press conference:
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 road block was temporarily lifted so that the ambulance crew could attend to a member of the public who was having a heart attack.
