The Hill reporter Taylor Lorenz who was on the ground at the protests today claims to have spoken to officers.
Claims that the driver is claiming not to have acted maliciously but was attacked and acted out of fear.
>twitter.com
Also claims that the car was attacked by people with bats.
>twitter.com
Twitter Archive:
This is the best video I could find.
Warning NSFW Video:
>youtube.com
At 30 seconds the car plows into the crowd. Followed by protesters carrying baseball bats.
Here is two protestres clearly shown in the picture here.
Here is a third man with a bat here chasing the car as it begins to back up:
Here is a fourth individual carrying a stick and swinging it at the car:
These people show up to the scene behind the car while chasing it. These people were armed and the claim is that he was attacked by protesters with bats before attempting to flee.
Some of the individuals who were hit are clearly the ones with weapons attacking the vehicle.
I'll update with more once I can see it. But this would go along with The Hill reporter's tweets regarding the car being attacked with baseball bats.
EDIT: Here's a shot from another angle showing someone swinging a bat at the vehicle before he hits someone:
Source:
>youtube.com
The car is clearly traveling slow enough for this bystander to step out into the road and swing the bat and making contact with his vehicle. This car was not traveling at a high rate of speed prior to hitting the crowd.
You can hear the engine begin to rev and the car speeds up once the car is hit with the baseball bat the contact is loud enough to be heard by the camera in the video from more than 50 yards away. Prior to this noone is panicked and there's no signal from the camera man or anyone on the side of the road that this person has already struck anyone or intended to.
Notice the car has no intention of hitting the man with the camera or on the bike passing by and also did not continue to hit anyone on the way out. Generally mass murderers are there to cause as much damage to people as possible.
Also there is no reports of a car chase or an attempt to resist officers or flee arrest. The only image we have is one of him sitting on the ground with his hands out. Generally not the MO of these types of car attackers or generally any terrorist or mass murderer.