It reportedly took officers seven minutes to get the man from the car to a police van.
15:29, 27 May 2025
An image of a street taped off by police, with uniformed officers standing guard. The road is covered in debris.
The scene in Water Street on Tuesday.(Image: PA)
A young woman who witnessed the Liverpool parade crash caught the moment the driver allegedly involved was bundled away by a sea of police officers.
The horror incident on Monday, May 26, saw a people-carrier squeezing through crowds of football supporters before accelerating and striking multiple people, leaving nearly 50 injured.
A 53-year-old man has since been arrested in connection. Charlie Connolly, 23, was filming from her flat above Water Street to show her boyfriend how vast the crowds were as she feared for his safety.
However, her footage instead captured the man being led away by a ring of steel keeping the swathes of people at bay.
Charlie was still "traumatised" by what she had witnessed as she spoke to our sister title The Mirror. She said: “I was videoing it to show my boyfriend the size of the crowd. It was crazy, I’d never seen that many people before. Ten minutes before it happened I said to him ‘it’s so crowded I’m surprised nothing bad has happened’.
“I realised something was happening when the crowds started running to the sides. It was disgusting, he wasn’t stopping and the only reason it stopped was because the bodies were trapped underneath it. “Two people got him out of the car at the start to stop him reversing and and going further. Then the police got him out and protected him.
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“The police were holding the suspect and it took seven minutes for them to get him from the car to the van. He was crunched over being carried by police with his head down. “It darkened the day which should have been full of joy.”
An image of multiple police vehicles, ambulances and fire engines among a crowd of people.
A huge emergency services presence was at the scene yesterday.(Image: PA)
A second witness reported that the driver appeared to be "agitated". Harry Rashid told BBC Radio 5 Live: “He looked kind of emotional, agitated, I don’t know why.
“His hands were moving about. He was trying to close the door of the car, I think, because they’ve tried to pull the door open and then he was trying to close it.”
He added: “Absolutely I was scared, I’m a human being. You worry for your life don’t you?”
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A woman called Chelsea, who was in the path of the car, told how she managed to jump out of the way. She said: “We heard beeping and screaming and as we looked up the car was coming directly for us and for everybody else and we just jumped, I grabbed my friend to jump out the way and she grabbed her daughter, and it just skimmed us.
“It must’ve been going about 30mph and then we were just in shock that we just nearly got run over but we didn’t really know the gravity of it at that point and we were just in shock, then we saw everybody chasing the car afterwards with all the windows smashed.”
The parade began south of the city at Allerton Maze, before embarking on a 10-mile route over three-and-a-half hours, which was due to finish with a finale in the city centre.
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However, it came to a terrifying halt as the crowds descended into chaos on Water Street following the incident, only a mile before its end point.