UK: Car Crashes Into Gates at Downing Street
Police arrested a man who crashed his car into the gates of Downing Street in London, the residence of UK PM Rishi Sunak, on Thursday. Sunak was in Downing Street at the time of the crash but is unharmed and has since left for a trip.
Facts
- Police arrested a man who crashed his car into the gates of Downing Street in London, the residence of UK PM Rishi Sunak, on Thursday. Sunak was in Downing Street at the time of the crash but is unharmed and has since left for a trip.1
- BBC footage showed a silver 2009 Kia slow down as it drove directly towards the main gates of Downing Street. Police responded very quickly to the incident, and part of Whitehall, London’s main road connecting government buildings, was evacuated.2
- No one was injured, and police don't consider the crash to be a terror incident. Witnesses say the driver was pulled out of the car and pinned to the ground, where police arrested him on the charge of dangerous driving.3
- The car crash has sparked a debate about the security of London’s prominent buildings. Downing Street was subject to a terror attack in 1991 that saw the Irish Republican Army launch a mortar bomb and launch projectiles from a van.4
- London has been on high alert and beefed up security in recent decades, but Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, who was present at the 2017 terror attack in Westminster, says that he still has “huge concerns.”2
- Metropolitan Police later released the suspect, 43-year-old Seth Kneller, but he was arrested Saturday on separate charges of possessing indecent images of children.5
Sources: 1CNN, 2BBC News (a), 3Sky News, 4Daily Mail, and 5BBC News (b).
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by Sky News. Even though the crash at Downing Street didn't result in any injuries or fatalities, it served as a reminder as to why London’s buildings must be armed with the highest security. It doesn’t appear that the suspect had any intentions of terrorism, but police did the right thing by treating the incident with the utmost concern.
- Narrative B, as provided by The Telegraph. It seems that the whole pomp and circumstance surrounding the “crash” at Downing Street is a bit of an exaggeration. While police sent bomb-sniffing dogs and initially treated the suspect like he was a terrorist, most media casually omitted that the car was driving roughly 2 miles per hour when it hit Downing Street’s gates. Security is an important issue, but this incident isn’t a reason to be up in arms.
