Police in the British city of Birmingham have begun a murder probe following the deaths of three young men who were killed when a car slammed into them during riots early Wednesday.
The West Midlands Police, which oversees Birmingham, have arrested a 32-year-old man on suspicion of murder and recovered a car that is being examined by forensics experts, the force said in a statement. The suspect has not been charged.
Haroon Jahan, a 21-year-old mechanic who was one of the three men killed, went out with other neighborhood residents to protect local stores from looters, his father, Tariq Jahan, told reporters on Wednesday.
"The guy who killed him drove directly into the crowd and killed three innocent guys," said Mr. Jahan, who watched the accident take place from a distance of about 100 yards. The incident took place at around 1 a.m. in the Winson Hill area of Birmingham.
Mr. Jahan said he ran to the scene and started helping one of the three men before realizing that his son was among the injured. With his face and hands covered in blood, Mr. Jahan turned around and started performing CPR on his son, but the effort failed.
"Everybody loved him in the community. Everybody knew him," Mr. Jahan said. Two other men, both roughly aged 30, died in addition to Mr. Jahan's son, police said. The three victims died in the hospital.
The murders in Birmingham come a day after a man was shot in the head and killed during riots that rattled the London area of Croydon on Monday night. Detectives from London's Metropolitan Police are investigating that death.
Though police have warned people to stay home during riots that have swept Britain since Saturday, many residents have poured into the streets to defend homes and local shops, in part out of concern that the police won't show up in time to protect them.
On Monday night in London, for instance, rioters looted stores for hours in places like Clapham Junction and Croydon before the police arrived, witnesses said.
As a result, citizens mounted their own defenses. In the London neighborhood of Dalston, shop owners guarded their stores with pool cues on Monday night. A group of Sikh residents from Birmingham, some armed with knives and spears, appeared on a local TV station Tuesday, saying they would protect their neighborhood.
Now, locals in London, Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere are cleaning up, as people like Mr. Jahan cope with loss.
"I miss him. I miss him deeply," Mr. Jahan said of his son, Haroon. "A day from now, maybe two days from now, the whole world will forget and nobody will care."
Source: online.wsj.com