Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I SAW BODIES FLY THROUGH THE AIR
Rapper held after car kills five and injures 48 in Xmas parade
A WITNESS to Sunday’s car attack on a Christmas parade that killed five has told of “bodies flying”.
School district board member Corey Montiho was speaking as amateur rapper Darrell Brooks, 39, was named as the suspect over the carnage in Waukesha, in Wisconsin in the US.
Mr Montiho said his daughter’s dance team, made up of girls aged nine to 15, were hit by the speeding SUV.
He added: “There were pom-poms and shoes and spilled hot chocolate everywhere. I had to go from one crumpled body to the other to find my daughter.
“My wife and two daughters were almost hit. I saw bodies flying. Addison, my daughter, heard someone yell ‘car’. “The girls right next to her were hit.” Witness Brayden Kowalski, 19, added: “These people didn’t get run over,
they got thrown through the air.” Police said the people killed were aged between 52 and 81. They added 48 people were injured, including two children.
But they said it was not a terrorist incident. Officers said Brooks was taken into custody a short way from the scene. He was to be charged with homicide. Brooks is thought to have been driving
an SUV that struck bands and dance troupes at more than 40mph. The driver ran over barriers before speeding away.
Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson said an officer fired at the SUV in an unsuccessful bid to stop it.
The car was found on a driveway nearby, with its bonnet badly dented.
Brooks had been charged with felony
bail jumping, recklessly endangering safety, battery, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer on November 2.
The suspect, from the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee, was also ordered not to have any contact with an alleged female victim. He paid a £750 bail bond for his release on November 19.
Local reports suggested the car’s driver might have hit bystanders by accident while himself fleeing a knife crime.
Brooks, who gave himself the stage name Mathboi Fly, has a lengthy criminal history beginning in the 1990s, when he was convicted of battery.
Saying online he was “not surprised” by the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict raised speculation that the car incident was related to the acquittal of the teen who shot dead two people during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.