Three police officers were among at least five people injured early Monday morning by an out-of-control driver blocks away from New Year's Eve festivities at Times Square in New York City.
The incident occurred at around 1:30 a.m. local time near Madison Square Garden, less than 10 blocks south of where many revelers departed the nearby area after watching the ball drop to ring in 2024, the New York Post reported.
A mass casualty incident was said to have been declared following the horror crash on West 34th Street and 9th Avenue, DailyMail.com reported.
After police officers attempted to intervene in a dispute, a man fled the scene in his car, striking several marked police cars and three officers, the Post reported.
The vehicle mounted the sidewalk and ran down civilians and cops before coming to a stop, DailyMail.com reported.
The driver, a 44-year-old male, was in custody at Bellevue Hospital.
A woman was pinned against a food truck during the incident, the Post reported.
Three automobiles, two black sedans and a taxi cab, were among the wrecked vehicles found at the scene.
Although New York Mayor Eric Adams had said there were "no specific threats" to his city's New Year Eve festivities, NYPD officers were on patrols as part of a heightened security effort.
Police said they expanded the security perimeter around the Times Square festivities to create a "buffer zone" to allow them to head off potential demonstrations, DailyMail.com reported.
A year ago, a man wielding a machete attacked three police officers at the New Year's Eve celebration in New York City, authorities said, striking two of them in the head before an officer shot the man in the shoulder.
Trevor Bickford, the 19-year-old American man charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of attempted assault for allegedly attacking police with a machete, kept a diary in which he wrote that he wanted to join the Taliban and die as a "martyr" in the cause of Islamic extremism, according to the New York Police Department.
The city has seen near-daily protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war, the Mirror reported.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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