Man arrested after nightclub ‘hit and run’

A TEENAGER has been arrested after a car was repeatedly driven into a crowd of people outside a Welsh nightclub.

Video footage captured on a mobile phone shows people screaming as a blue Ford C Max is driven into a group on Cambrian Road, in Newport city centre in the early hours of yesterday.

The driver can be seen reversing before ploughing into the group twice more as men run after the car. Four people were taken to hospital after the incident, which left two women with lifechanging injuries.

The car was later found burnt out by police, who have arrested an 18-year-old man.

Iftekhar Haris, the nightclub manager, described the incident as “horrific” and said: “A vehicle approached, it tried to get through, then squeezed through the two vehicles and ended up hitting [people] stood here.

“This is a very busy road on a Saturday evening and basically this road here is a road that is closed during the day but for some strange reason it’s open during the evening when it should be closed. It’s absolutely crazy.

“Initially it would have just been a person trying to get through but what happened is he actually hit a person and then it turned into almost like a mob who went after the vehicle and the driver of the vehicle.

“The situation got quite bad where people were basically attacking the vehicle because the vehicle had actually hit someone.

“Then the unbelievable happened, where the driver actually went across on to the pavement and hit two girls, two innocent girls, who were just sat there at the end of the night.

“It was horrific. It’s something that you don’t want to see on any street.” Gwent Police Superintendent Glyn Fernquest said the hit and run was not terror-related.