By Mark Tanos
Nearly a dozen people were hurt Saturday when a driver sped into a crowd in a northern Italian city and stabbed a bystander who chased him.
The car struck pedestrians on Via Emilia, a busy street in central Modena, before four bystanders wrestled the driver down and turned him over to police, CNN reported. Mayor Massimo Mezzetti said eight people were wounded, four of them seriously. One woman had both legs amputated after the vehicle hit her head-on, according to the outlet.
Emergency crews, including police, the Carabinieri and financial police, sealed off the street, Newsweek reported. The most badly injured were flown to hospitals in Modena and Bologna. (RELATED: Car Bomb Explodes Outside Police Station, Cops Arrest Elderly Terror Suspect)
Luca Signorelli, one of the men who stopped the driver, had been tending to an injured woman when the suspect tried to flee, CNN reported. The man slipped out of view, then came back with a knife. “I was stabbed twice, once in the heart and once in the head. I managed to dodge one of the two, and during the other one I grabbed his wrist and blocked him,” Signorelli said.
The driver, identified as Salim el Koudri, is a 31-year-old of Moroccan origin who was born in northern Italy, an Italian outlet Il Gazzettino reported. He holds an economics degree, was unemployed, and was questioned at police headquarters in Modena while officers searched his home.
Investigators from the terrorism unit of the Bologna District Prosecutor’s Office have taken up the case and are examining what led the driver to strike the pedestrians, Il Gazzettino reported. Authorities had not determined whether the driver acted deliberately or was impaired, CNN reported. He remained in custody for questioning Saturday evening.
Mezzetti called it dramatic and said its cause was still unknown. “If it turns out to be an attack, that would be even more serious,” the mayor said, according to Euronews. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the incident extremely serious in a post on X. “I trust that the person responsible will be held fully accountable for his actions,” Meloni wrote.
