Eight people were killed and 12 injured when a vehicle crashed into a crowd at an off-road truck race in southern California last night.
The accident happened shortly after the start of the California 200 race, Cindy Bachman, the San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman, said.
Seven ambulances and 10 emergency aircraft were sent to the scene, and most of the injured were airlifted from the area to hospitals. The driver was unhurt but was forced to flee the scene to escape angry crowds.
The 200-mile (320km) race is part of a series held in Soggy Dry Lake Bed, near Lucerne valley in the Mojave desert, 100 miles north-east of Los Angeles.
David Conklin, a photographer covering the event, said the Prerunner truck was among the first 20 off the line in the race, and had just gone over a jump known as the rockpile about two miles into the race.
Conklin said he watched the vehicle sail through the air and had turned to watch for other cars when he heard screaming and shouting. “I saw one woman with a major head wound lying in a pool of blood,” he said. “Someone else was crushed beneath the car.”
Tens of thousands of people attend the California 200, in which a variety of off-road vehicles take jumps and other obstacles and reach speeds up to 100mph on the 50-mile off-road course. The race had been scheduled to last through the night.
The crowd was within 10 feet of the track, with no guard rails separating spectators from the vehicles.
The crash was the latest in a series of deadly race accidents in the US.
A car crashed into a crowd that had gathered to watch an illegal drag race on a suburban road in Accokeek, Maryland, in 2008, killing eight people and injuring five.
In Selmer, Tennessee, a dragster went out of control and crashed into spectators during a fundraising festival in June 2007, killing six people and injuring 22.
Originally reported by the Guardian. Read the original article here.
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