An articulated lorry crashed into multiple vehicles and mounted the pavement at Dublin Airport departures Wednesday night, with an eyewitness describing the carnage of cars thrown aside “like dominos” by the heavy truck.
UPDATE 2320: Five People Confirmed Injured, One Hospitalised.
Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, reports that five people were injured in a “multi-vehicle collision” at Dublin Airport on Wednesday evening. One of the injured people was brought to Beaumont Hospital to receive medical treatment, while the others reportedly sustained minor injuries. A taxi driver needed to be cut from his vehicle after a crash.
UPDATE 2030: Police wrap investigation of the scene, roads reopen.
The Gardai (Ireland’s National Police and Security Service) at Dublin Airport announced on social media that they have finished their “technical examination of the scene of the traffic incident” and have reopened all of the roads around the airport.
An articulated lorry “struck a number of vehicles” at Dublin airport at approximately 19:20 local time, Irish police have confirmed in a statement Wednesday evening. Despite the considerable scale of the multiple collisions the truck was involved with, the force reports injuries are limited to minor ones, although many vehicles were damaged.
Major Irish broadcaster RTE reports roads leading to the airport have been closed and police, fire brigade, and ambulance units are attending the airport.
Irish Police, the Gardai, said:
At approximately 7.20pm this evening… a lorry struck a number of vehicles outside Terminal One and on the departure road of Dublin Airport. A number of cars were damaged and it is understood that a number of persons received minor injuries.
Motorists are advised to avoid the Dublin Airport complex where possible due to road closures as gardaí conduct a technical examination of the scene.
An eyewitness to the incident told Breitbart London that he had just arrived in Dublin by plane to spend Christmas with his family as the truck arrived. Describing the truck spinning its wheels, mounting the pavement, and driving to collide with parked vehicles, he believed the event was deliberate.
The Irish Journal reports no arrests have been made, however, and that the driver of the truck had suffered a “medical emergency”. Irish police have not indicated they suspect there was any motive behind the incident, however, RTE reports that the police are treating the medical emergency as “one of the lines of investigation”.
The eyewitness told Breitbart London:
I walked out of the departure lounge — to your left and right there are cars, where people unload their luggage, where people are dropped off and collected. Something drew my attention to the left, where the approach ramp comes to the flat and I saw the lorry going slowly. I could see other people were looking at the lorry suspiciously.
He suddenly picked up speed, drove through two cars. There were screams, glass smashing, and he mounted the pavement. As he hit cars, they were being pushed out into the road. People were jumping out of the way as he smashed through seven or eight cars.
I think it was completely on purpose. There were a lot of people gathered on the pavement at the point at which he decided to mount the pavement… you could hear the glass smashing and the women screaming. I heard wheelspin and he went from car to car.
When he got wedged between a car and a bollard, people were shouting, two men tried to rush the driver, and I think one tried to open one of the [cab] doors.Then the truck became loose again and he picked up speed, went through the rest of the cars that were parked along the platform, knocking them down like dominos, and without reducing speed at all he went away, continuing beyond the airport car parking.
The witness’s own vehicle was not damaged in the incident and could be driven away. He described what he saw next:
As we drove away there was car after car, all totally smashed in. Broken glass all over the road, the whole side of a coach was grazed. Towards the McDonalds I could see he had mounted the pavement again and smashed two taxis, one of them very badly. All of these cars were totally written off, parts lying in the road everywhere — signposts and lamp-posts down, he was clearly sticking to the pavement at this point.
Towards the motorway intersection he came to a halt in among the trees and the glass… [The Truck] eventually came to a stop on the motorway outside the airport, I don’t know how he came to a stop. It looks like his wheels were submerged in the soil.
Breitbart London has contacted the airport authority and Dublin police for more information but at the time of publication neither had replied.
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