A pickup truck driven by a man who appeared to be "highly intoxicated" plowed into a crowd of spectators watching the main Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Saturday, sending more than 20 people to the hospital, police said.
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. Five people were being treated at hospital trauma centers, and an investigation is ongoing, police said.
Police immediately apprehended the pickup driver, who according to eyewitnesses interviewed by Fox television affiliate WVEU-TV appeared disheveled, glassy-eyed and under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu in a statement referred to the suspect as a "drunk driver."
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.
(Reuters)
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