A car against hand rammed 25 cadets from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office while the group of recruits conducted drills at a boot camp. “It looked like a plane crashwith bodies everywhere,” authorities described the scene they found. Five people are hospitalized in critical condition.
The driver of the vehicle, a 22-year-old Hispanic man, was arrested. According to the first investigations, he had no traces of alcohol in his blood. The cause of the crash is “unknown” at this time, said Alex Villanueva, chief of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD).
The accident occurred at dawn this Wednesday. A total of 75 sheriff’s cadets — consisting of two classes — jogged in formation along northbound Mills Street, just yards from LASD’s STARS Explorer Academy in the city of Whittier. As they usually do at the start of each day, they were accompanied by eight traffic guards and escorted by two security cars.
Suddenly, they were surprised by an SUV traveling south. According to witnesses, the car was accelerating, traveling nearly 60 kilometers per hour and suddenly turned into the oncoming lane.
As a result of the accident, 25 were injured, including the driver of the car. At least five of the downed recruits are in serious condition. There was “loss of limbs” and one of the seriously injured is receiving assisted breathing.
Emotion in Los Angeles: “Bodies scattered everywhere”
The first emergency call came in at 6:26am, although before 12 ambulance and police personnel arrived, firefighters from a nearby barracks rendered first aid to those affected.
The scene was horrific. “It looked like a plane crash. It happened bodies scattered everywhere in different injury states, it was traumatic for everyone,” Villanueva said, as reported by Los Angeles Times.
Video taken from helicopters by network television showed firefighters and ambulances at work on the street, several people in sportswear and a dark-colored car on the sidewalk.
The invested recruits were going through the eighth of 22 weeks of training.
The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is leading the investigation. They explore everything from whether the driver was intoxicated to whether it was intentional.
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Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.