At least 28 people, including a young child, were injured when a vehicle ploughed into a crowd watching the Krewe of Endymion parade in the Mid-City section of New Orleans.
The Times-Picayune said the crash was reported at about 6:45pm on Saturday as the city prepared for the Mardi Gras celebrations.
The truck, traveling along the side of the street open to traffic along the Mid-City parade route, struck three other vehicles, including a dump truck, before veering onto the median where a crowd of people stood watching the procession, according to New Orleans police.
Officials said 21 people, including a police officer, were taken to seven hospitals. Five were in a critical condition. Seven of the injured refused to be hospitalised.
The victims range in age from as young as three or four-years-old to adults in their 30s and 40s, city emergency services director, Dr Jeff Selder said.
Police chief Michael Harrison said one person was in custody.
“We suspect that that subject was highly intoxicated,” he said.
The city’s mayor Mitch Landrieu said on Twitter that no one had suffered life-threatening injuries and thanked first responders.
Images and video from the scene were posted on social media showing the injured being stretchered into waiting ambulances.
At least 4 loaded into ambulances by Endymion parade at Carrollton and Orleans after car hits people. @WWLTV pic.twitter.com/9fhdNH9PT6
— David Hammer (@davidhammerWWL) February 26, 2017
NBCNC: Scene where a vehicle crashed into spectators of the Krewe of Endymion parade in New Orleans. At least 12 critically hurt. @WVTM13 pic.twitter.com/0qZmtQunpE
— Shannon (@ShannonWVTM13) February 26, 2017
#MardiGras2017 Orleans & Carrollton - at least a dozen are critical after someone slammed their vehicle into the Endymion crowd. pic.twitter.com/ohlne83zlr
— chill (@chiIIum) February 26, 2017
Witness Greg McNeely told the Times Picayune he was watching the parade when a pick-up truck sped through the intersection and came to rest against a rubbish bin.
Several people, including a police officer, were pinned underneath the truck, he said.
“He took out rows of people,” McNeely said.
One woman at the scene told The New Orleans Advocate that a silver truck whisked by her just feet away as she was walking through the intersection.
Carrie Kinsella said, “I felt a rush it was so fast.”
Twenty-year-old Kourtney McKinnis told the Advocate that the driver of the truck seemed almost unaware of what he had just done.
“He was just kind of out of it,” she said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Orleans said its agents were “coordinating with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to determine whether a federal violation has occurred.”
The Endymion parade incident was not the only one to mar Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans on Saturday. Earlier in the day, someone’s gun went off accidentally in a portable toilet along the route of another, smaller parade, leaving one person wounded, police said.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
