The 2005 Glendale train crash occurred on January 26, 2005, at 6:03 a.m. PST, when a Metrolink commuter train collided with a sport utility vehicle that had been parked on the tracks by a suicidal man in an industrial area of Glendale, California, just east of the Los Angeles city limits, causing the deaths of 11 people and injuring 177 more. The driver of the car, who had changed his mind shortly before the impact but willingly left his car on the tracks, survived the incident and was charged with eleven counts of murder and one count of arson.
The 2009 attack on the Dutch royal family occurred on 30 April in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, when a man drove his car at high speed into a parade which included Queen Beatrix, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and other members of the royal family. The attack took place on the Dutch national holiday of Koninginnedag.
A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 90 dead and some 473 injured. As most cases had no known motive, analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kinds of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.
On 28 October 2013, a car ran over pedestrians and crashed in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, in a terrorist suicide attack. Five people died in the incident; three inside the vehicle and two others nearby. Police identified the driver as Usmen Hasan and the two passengers as his wife, Gulkiz Gini, and his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim. An additional 38 people were injured.
Events in the year 2014 in China.
On the morning of 22 May 2014, two sport utility vehicles (SUVs) carrying five assailants were driven into a busy street market in Ürümqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Up to a dozen explosives were thrown at shoppers from the windows of the SUVs. The SUVs crashed into shoppers, then collided with each other and exploded. Forty three people were killed, including four of the assailants; more than 90 were wounded, making this the deadliest attack of the Xinjiang conflict. The event was designated as a terrorist attack.
A vehicle-ramming attack, also known as a vehicle as a weapon or VAW attack, is an assault in which a perpetrator deliberately rams a vehicle into a building, people, or another vehicle. According to Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts, this attack represents a relatively new militant tactic that could prove more difficult to prevent than suicide bombings.
On 20 June 2015, Alen Rizvanović drove a sports utility vehicle at high speeds through the center of Graz, Austria, killing three people in a matter of minutes and injuring 43 others, one of them dying months later. At one point during the attack, Rizvanović got out of the vehicle and stabbed two passers-by.
On May 18, 2017, a car was crashed in Times Square, New York City, United States. One person was killed and 20 were injured. Navy veteran Richard Rojas was charged with one count of second degree murder, 18 attempted murders and 38 assaults, for which he was found not responsible because of insanity.
On the morning of 15 May 2011, a terrorist attack was carried out in Tel Aviv. A truck was deliberately rammed into cars and pedestrians at busy "Bar-Lev" street in the south of the city, killing one man and injuring 17 others. The truck driver was identified as Aslam Ibrahim Isa, a 22-year-old Arab-Israeli man from the city of Kfar Kassem. Immediately after the attack he was arrested and taken to questioning by police.
On 21 December 2017, at 4:41 pm AEDT, a driver rammed pedestrians with his car at the corner of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, killing one person and injuring seventeen others, including himself. The sole fatality, an elderly man, died eight days after the attack.
The Charlottesville car attack was a white supremacist terrorist attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 35. Fields, 20, had previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, and drove from Ohio to attend the rally.
On 14 August 2018, three people were injured when a silver Ford Fiesta hit them near the Palace of Westminster, London, England. The car then went on to crash into the separation barrier of the pavement situated between St Margaret Street / Abingdon Street and Old Palace Yard. The Metropolitan Police responded within seconds and arrested the driver, Salih Khater, without further incident. An ambulance immediately behind the Ford stopped and gave assistance to the injured. Khater was subsequently found guilty of two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2017, two people were murdered in separate incidents – one in Michigan and one in Ohio – when teenagers threw rocks and sandbags from two highway overpasses along Interstate 75.
The 2019 Tokyo car attack was a vehicle-ramming attack that occurred on January 1, 2019, in Tokyo, Japan. 21-year-old Kazuhiro Kusakabe told authorities he intentionally rammed into pedestrians crowded into narrow Takeshita Street in Harajuku district as a terrorist attack in retaliation for the execution of Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult members. The New Year's Day attack left eight injured. A ninth person was also directly injured by the driver. Kusakabe said he initially planned an arson attack by spreading kerosene with a high-pressure washer at the crowd at the nearby Meiji Shrine but found that vehicles were not permitted there.
Deona Marie Knajdek, a 31-year old American woman, was killed on June 13, 2021, when a man drove a car into a crowd of demonstrators who had gathered as a part of the Uptown Minneapolis unrest. That evening, demonstrators protesting the law enforcement killing of Winston Boogie Smith had blocked the intersection of West Lake Street and Girard Avenue. At approximately 11:39 p.m. CDT, a man in a late-model Jeep Cherokee drove into the crowd at a high speed, striking a parked vehicle that had been used to block off the intersection to traffic, which then collided with protesters, killing Knajdek and injuring three others.
At 13:45 on 1 December 2020, a man rammed pedestrians with an SUV at high speed in a pedestrian zone in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, killing six people—a 45-year-old man and his infant daughter; a 77-year-old man; and three women aged 25, 52, and 73— and wounding 23 others. The driver, who was alone in the car and had a blood alcohol content of 0.14%, was arrested at the scene.
On November 21, 2021, Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. drove a sport utility vehicle (SUV) through the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, United States, killing 6 people and injuring 62 others.
On 11 January 2023, the driver of a black BMW X3 deliberately rammed his vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians and motorists on Tianhe Road in Guangzhou, China, killing six people and injuring 29 others. 22-year-old Wen Qingyun was arrested in connection to the attack, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed on 19 April 2024.
