The incident

On Monday June 19th just after midnight, a van ploughed into a group of Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park, London. Early reports had a number of people severely injured and one person possibly killed. Within the day, further details had emerged: the crash had deliberately targeted Muslim worshippers from the nearby mosque, the van was driven by a lone white man who was apprehended on scene and handed over to the police and an imam had prevented an angry crowd from taking out their anger on the driver.

Some eyewitness accounts

Key points from this witness:

• Someone collapsed and was being given assistance.
• A van coming up the road just suddenly turned left and hit the group of people.
• Three people jumped out of the van but only one was apprehended.
• The man detained shouted ‘I want to kill all Muslims.’

Key points from this report:

• REPORTER: Shortly after midnight, a van drove into a crowd of worshippers from the local mosque.
• REPORTER: One person dead, eight injured, taken to three different hospitals.
• REPORTER: Man identified in the van was arrested.
• WITNESS: Behind him he heard a crash, turned and saw the van hit the people.
• WITNESS: Saw a number of injured people, one dead.
• WITNESS #2: (Same witness as the first video above): One man was under the van and was seriously injured.
• WITNESS #3: Two of my cousins were seriously injured. Four to ten people died.

Eyewitness from this report (skip to 5:18):

• White van came up the bus lane, took a sharp left and ran over the people deliberately.
• Saw people getting hit.

Eyewitness from this report (skip to 0:57):

• WITNESS #1: Van coming up the Seven Sisters road at high speed
• WITNESS #1: He turned into the alleyway and drove through the people
• WITNESS #1: Some people were dragged for a few metres
• WITNESS #2: Eight to ten people taken away by ambulance
• WITNESS #3: All of the injuries were very bad

The scene

Here’s a Google Maps screenshot of the scene:

According to the witnesses above, the van came up Seven Sisters road, driving in the left hand lane - the bus lane - at speed and took a sharp left into Whadcoat Street, hitting the people there. Here’s a streetview looking up Whadcoat Street:

Note the four bollards blocking off the road about 50 yards away. The leftmost visible one will show up just below. Back to the overhead view. The orange line shows his route:

At least two of the eyewitness accounts cannot be true. A heavy (two to three ton) van travelling “at speed” cannot perform a greater than 90 degree turn. Actually, no vehicle can. Because physics. What did this vehicle look like after it had come to a halt?

The van

It looked like this:

Note the bollard that has been knocked over by the vehicle - it has the same striped pattern as the ones in the streetview picture. See for yourself on Google Streetview here.

But the van itself, quite apart from being unable to corner at an impossible angle, hasn’t hit anything. Its headlights, grille, bodywork and numberplate are all undamaged and squeaky-clean - pristine even. If it had hit and dragged a number of human bodies, it would be damaged. Here’s another picture of it from the next day:

Clean as a whistle.

Conclusion

There are some questions that need to be asked about some of the specific details of this event.

• How many people were in the van? One or three?
• How fast was it going when it hit the pedestrians?
• Why does the van not show any damage at all if it hit and dragged a number of people?

Part II coming.