Cars are being turned into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests and riots erupted in May after a cop was caught on tape with his knee on the neck of a man later identified as George Floyd.
Though such attacks have a history in the US, such as the one in which an Iranian named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, intentionally injured 9 people with SUV on the campus of University of North Carolina to “avenge the death of Muslims worldwide”, the cases of vehicle rammings begin to be more observed during 2015 and 2016, when the “Run Them Over” meme became well-known in far-right circles in response to Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations against the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
The most high-profile attack took place a year later, during 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in which James Alex Fields Jr., a white supremacist, plowed his car into a crowd, killing a woman named Heather Heyer and wounding dozens of others.
From May 27 to June 17, at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents have been recorded in the US. Of those, five were by law enforcement and 45 by civilians. At least 18 of the civilian incidents involved malice, and another 23 remain unclear as to motive. Most of the attacks took place in the first 14 days of protests.
Four were ruled accidental, including the viral incident when a tanker barreled down a highway located in Minneapolis, sending terrified protesters running for their lives. Officials later released the driver without charges, saying he had acted foolishly but did not intentionally target protesters.
Most of the recent rammings have been recorded on video. One ramming in Boston was shown live on the local TV news, with the reporter at the scene telling, “Several people just got hit! Several people just got run over!”
Though there must be more incidents involving the use of the car as a weapon which was never reported.
