What we know about the “accidental” car explosion at the border with Canada

2023-11-23 03:40:42

America will finally be able to spend Thanksgiving peacefully on Thursday. Two people were killed Wednesday in the apparently accidental explosion of a car at a border bridge between the United States and Canada, at Niagara Falls, putting the authorities of the two countries on security alert.

What happened ?

At 11:22 a.m., a car rushed at very high speed – around 130-160 km/h according to witnesses – on a boulevard parallel to the Rainbow Bridge border checkpoint, one of the bridges allowing crossing into Canada. According to video surveillance images, the car mounted the central reservation before flying away then hitting a guardrail or safety barrier and exploding.

CBP is working closely with @FBIfederal, state & local partners in response to a vehicle explosion at Rainbow Bridge which remains closed. Out of abundance of caution, CBP temporarily suspended inbound/outbound traffic at 3 other Buffalo crossings that have since reopened. pic.twitter.com/pTXyUsavRB

— CBP (@CBP) November 22, 2023

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What do the authorities say?

“There is no evidence at this point that this is terrorist activity,” New York State Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters in Niagara Falls, a city straddling the border between the two North American countries. Dispatched to the site, hundreds of kilometers north of New York City, the head of the regional executive spoke of a “horrible incident, a (car) accident, an explosion (…) but at this stage no proven terrorist link.”

“The incident at the Rainbow Bridge is not terrorism-related and was in fact a fatal motor vehicle accident,” the Erie County Sheriff said. Quoted by the New York Times, a US law enforcement official said his investigators believed the explosion was the result of the car collision. A suitcase was discovered near the vehicle but it did not contain any explosives, according to the same source.

Who were the two people killed?

Hochul confirmed the deaths of the two people who were in the car, a $300,000 Bentley. According to CNN, it would be a 56-year-old man and his wife. The couple were supposed to go to the Kiss concert the day before but ended up spending the night at the casino. At this point, it is unclear why the driver was going so fast and lost control.

Why was the terrorist trail mentioned by Republicans?

A lot of erroneous information circulated immediately after the accident. The Niagara Falls town hall initially claimed that the vehicle came from Canada. In the process, Fox News and the New York Post assured that according to their sources, it was an “attempted attack”, with “a car full of explosives”. Many Republicans, including the defeated candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, immediately accused the Biden administration of being incapable of securing the border.