A 31-year-old man arrested, two young people killed in one street, another man in another and three wounded at a third location in the center of Nottingham during the early hours of the morning led to an impressive police operation in that city northwest of London. However, at the end of the day, authorities did not reveal much more, leaving the killer’s motivation open, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak summed up the mood by lamenting the “shocking incident”.
Nottingham Police have announced the arrest of a 31-year-old man suspected of murder after three dead bodies were found. Police called Ilkeston Road, in an area close to the town centre, at 4am and found two dead on the street with stab wounds.
Residents reported screaming and witnessing a young man and woman being stabbed before the attacker, dressed in black, hooded and carrying a backpack, calmly left the crime scene. It was later learned that the victims were two 19-year-old college students, with only the identity of the young man, Barnaby Webber, being released.
Officers were later called to another location, Milton Street, less than a mile away, “where a van had attempted to run over three people”. All three were injured, one seriously. Later, a third person was found dead on the street on Magdala Road, a few miles away. His identity was not disclosed, only that he was a man in his 50s.
An hour and a half after authorities were called, the suspect was apprehended after being shot with a taser pistol. The man was in the van he used to drive over, which was stolen from the third fatality. The vehicle had a windshield with two shrapnel chips and an equal number of dents on the hood.
“We believe these three incidents are all linked and we have a man in custody,” said police chief Kate Meynell. Over the next few hours, the police cordon grew wider and dozens of officers searched not only the van, but the entire area, including raiding a house on the street where the double homicide took place.
“We are still in the early stages of the investigation and need to find out the motives behind these attacks. We are keeping an ‘open mind’ and are working with counter-terrorism police to establish the facts, as we normally would with these types of attacks. of circumstances,” the local police later said in a statement.
Overnight, Sky News reported that agents from the anti-terror unit who had traveled to the town of 300,000 had returned and left the investigation to the armed forces in the region. According to the BBC, the arrested man would have “mental problems”.
Five days earlier, a Syrian, also aged 31, used a knife to attack children and adults – one of them Portuguese – in a park in Annecy, France. On Twitter, President Emmanuel Macron left a message of solidarity with the victims and families of the “tragic events in Nottingham” and stated that his country shares the pain of “British friends”.
Source: DN
