An SUV crashed into a crowd at a Filipino heritage festival in Vancouver over the weekend, killing 11 people and injuring dozens of others in the latest deadly car ramming attack across the globe.
Other such attacks in recent decades have been inspired by extremist politics or been blamed on mental illness or misogyny.
What authorities call “vehicle as a weapon attacks” have reshaped cities, with concrete barriers around public spaces and anti-vehicle obstacles in new developments. In the 2025 attack along Bourbon Street that took place just before New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl, officials added blast barriers for added safety.
Here are the details of some major vehicle attacks:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 26, 2025 — A suspect has been charged with multiple counts of murder after an Audi SUV sped down a closed, food-truck-lined street and hit people attending a festival. Officials say 32 people were hurt, and those killed ranged in age from 5 to 65. Authorities say the suspect, a 30-year-old man, had a history of mental health issues.
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 1, 2025 — At least 15 people are killed and dozens are injured after a U.S. citizen from Texas rams a vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians in New Orleans’ bustling French Quarter district at 3:15 a.m. on New Year’s Day. The FBI identifies the suspect as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar. He is killed in a firefight with police. The FBI says several possible explosive devices were recovered and that a flag associated with the Islamic State group was found in the truck.
MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec. 20. 2024 — At least five people are killed and more than 200 are injured when a car slams into a Christmas market in eastern Germany. Police arrest a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has renounced Islam and supports the far-right AfD party.
ZHUHAI, China, Nov. 11, 2024 — A 62-year-old driver rams his car into people exercising at a sports complex in southern China, killing 35, in the country’s deadliest attack in years. Authorities say the suspect is upset about his divorce. He pleads guilty to endangering public safety by dangerous means and is sentenced to death.
WAUKESHA, Wisconsin, Nov. 21, 2021 — Six people are killed and dozens injured when a man drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee. Darrell Brooks Jr., who drove into the crowd after getting into a fight with his ex-girlfriend, has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of release. The judge rejects arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it.
LONDON, Ontario, June 6, 2021 — Four members of a Muslim family are killed when an attacker hits them with a pickup truck. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls it “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.” White nationalist Nathaniel Veltman is sentenced to life in prison.
TORONTO, April 23, 2018 — A 25-year-old Canadian man, Alek Minassian, drives a rental van into mostly female pedestrians on Yonge Street, the main thoroughfare in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 16. Minassian tells police he belongs to an online “incel” community of sexually frustrated men. He is sentenced to life in prison.
NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2017 — Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic extremist from Uzbekistan, drives a pickup truck onto a popular New York City bike path, killing eight people. He is convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 10 life sentences plus 260 years in prison.
BARCELONA, Spain, Aug. 17, 2017 — A man rams a van into people on the Spanish city’s crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring others. The Islamic State group claims responsibility. Several members of the same cell carry out a similar attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils, killing one person.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017 — During a “Unite the Right” rally, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drives his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens of people. Fields is serving a life sentence for murder and hate crimes.
LONDON, June 19, 2017 — Darren Osborne, a man radicalized by far-right ideas, drives a van into worshippers outside a mosque in Finsbury Park, killing one man and injuring 15 people. Osborne is sentenced to life in prison.
LONDON, June 3, 2017 — Three attackers drive a van into pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people are killed and the attackers are shot dead by police.
LONDON, March 22, 2017 — British man Khalid Masood rams an SUV into people on Westminster Bridge, killing four, then fatally stabs a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament. Masood is shot dead.
MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 20, 2017 – Six people are killed and more than 30 injured when a car hits lunchtime crowds at a pedestrian mall in Australia’s second-largest city. James Gargasoulas is found to have been in a state of drug-induced psychosis and is sentenced to life in prison.
BERLIN, Dec. 19, 2016 — Anis Amri, a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia, plows a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in the German capital, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. The attacker is killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
NICE, France, July 14, 2016 — Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drives a rented truck for more than a mile (almost 2 kilometers) along a packed seaside promenade in the French Riviera resort on the Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people in the deadliest attack of its kind. He is killed by police, but eight other people are sentenced to prison for helping orchestrate the attack.
STILLWATER, Oklahoma, Oct. 24, 2015 — A woman plows a car into a crowd at an Oklahoma State University homecoming parade, killing four people, including a toddler, and injuring many others. Adacia Chambers, who pleaded no contest to more than 40 felony charges, will serve four concurrent life sentences for the deaths. Witnesses have described a scene of chaos as bodies flew into the air from the impact and landed on the road.
APELDOORN, Netherlands, April 28, 2009 – Former security guard Karst Tates drives a car into parade spectators in an attempt to hit an open-topped bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family. Six people are killed and Tates dies of injuries the next day, leaving his full motive a mystery.
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, March 3, 2006 — University of North Carolina graduate Mohammed Taheri-Azar drives an SUV into a crowd at the university, lightly injuring nine people, in a self-professed bid to avenge Muslim deaths overseas. He is sentenced to up to 33 years in prison.
SANTA MONICA, California, July 16, 2003 — An 86-year-old man crashes into a farmers’ market, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others. He was sentenced to probation after being convicted of 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
Vancouver Police detectives walk along where a car drove through a crowd killing multiple people on the weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, Monday April 28, 2025. (Rich Lam/The Canadian Press via AP)
Chicago, New England and Jacksonville were all battling for draft positioning at this time a year ago with the three teams finishing off seasons that left them at the bottom of the NFL standings.
The disappointing 2024 season led to coaching changes that have paid immediate dividends with the Bears, Patriots and Jaguars all clinching playoff berths this week in the first year of the new regimes.
The work done by Ben Johnson in Chicago, Mike Vrabel in New England and Liam Coen in Jacksonville is impressive but far from unprecedented as it marked the 20th straight season that at least one team made the playoffs with a coach in his first year on the job, according to Sportradar.
In that span, there has been an average of just more over two first-year coaches who have led their teams to the postseason each year with the three this season tied for the second most.
There were an NFL-record five first-year coaches who made the playoffs in 2022 when Minnesota's Kevin O'Connell, Miami's Mike McDaniel, the New York Giants' Brian Daboll, Tampa Bay's Todd Bowles and Jacksonville's Doug Pederson all did it.
Johnson, Vrabel and Coen will try to join some more elite company as eight coaches have made it to the Super Bowl in their first full season with a team. Four of those coaches won it all with Denver the last to do it in the 2015 season under Gary Kubiak. The others were Jon Gruden in 2002 with Tampa Bay, George Seifert in 1989 with San Francisco and Don McCafferty in 1970 with the Baltimore Colts.
Gruden and Kubiak had coached other teams, meaning Johnson and Coen will try to join McCafferty and Seifert as the only coaches to win a Super Bowl in their first year as an NFL head coach.
While Chicago, New England and Jacksonville are having noteworthy turnarounds, the two No. 1 seeds from a year ago have fallen flat and both could miss the playoffs.
Kansas City has already been eliminated and Detroit needs to win two games and hope Green Bay loses twice to get in.
The Lions and Chiefs both won 15 games last season. Only two of the previous seven teams to win at least that many games missed the playoffs the following season with Carolina doing it in 2016 after going 15-1 and New England in 2008 following a 16-0 regular season when Tom Brady injured his knee in the season opener.
The NFL's new overtime rules provided a first this past week with Seattle becoming the first team to win an overtime game with a walk-off 2-point conversion.
This is the first regular season where a team scoring a touchdown on the opening possession of OT doesn't end the game, as the NFL expanded a rule first put in place in 2022 for the playoffs that guaranteed both teams the opportunity for at least one possession.
That change proved important for the Seahawks, who responded to the touchdown drive by the Los Angeles Rams to open overtime with one of their own. That prompted coach Mike Macdonald to go for 2 and the win rather then extend the game as sudden death and Seattle converted for the 38-37 win.
It was the third time this season that a team went for 2 and the win after both teams scored touchdowns in overtime, with the Raiders failing in Week 9 against Jacksonville and Washington missing in Week 13 against Denver.
There have been 14 overtime games in all this season with only one lasting longer than two drives. Dallas and the New York Giants combined for five possessions in Week 2 before the Cowboys won 40-37 on a field goal.
Four were decided when the team that started with the ball scored first and the second team couldn't match and four others where the team that got the ball first failed to score and then allowed a game-winning score on the next drive.
There was also one tie in Week 4 when Dallas made a field goal on the opening possession and Green Bay used the rest of the 10-minute period on a drive that ended with a game-tying field goal.
The “showdown” between the NFL’s only two-win teams when Las Vegas hosts the New York Giants on Sunday will be a rarity — and an important game when it comes to draft order.
This will be just the fourth time since the merger, according to Sportradar, that the two teams with sole possession of the worst two records in the league meet in a game in the final two weeks.
The loser of the game Sunday in Las Vegas will “win” the right to pick first with another loss in Week 18 with a potential prize of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Fernando Mendoza or the chance to trade down for a haul of picks.
The previous three late-season showdowns for the top pick didn’t provide a great prize to the team that ended up No. 1.
In 1981, New England lost the season finale to Baltimore and ended up with defensive lineman Kenneth Sims, who had 17 sacks in eight seasons and never made a Pro Bowl.
In 1980, the winless Saints beat the three-win Jets in Week 15 after already clinching the top pick in the draft. New Orleans picked running back George Rogers, who had a solid career, but wasn’t nearly as good as the three Hall of Fame defenders who went in the top eight of that draft: Lawrence Taylor, Kenny Easley and Ronnie Lott.
The first time it happened came in 1971 when Buffalo lost to Houston in Week 15 to clinch the top pick. The Bills took defensive lineman Walt Patulski, who lasted just five seasons.
New Orleans' jack-of-all-trades Taysom Hill reached an exclusive mark when he caught a 7-yard pass from Tyler Shough in the fourth quarter on Sunday against the Jets to give him 1,002 yards receiving in his career.
Hill had already topped the 1,000-yard mark as both a passer and runner and became the first player in the Super Bowl era with 1,000 yards in each. Hill capped his day by throwing a 38-yard touchdown pass to Chris Olave and now has 2,551 yards rushing and 2,426 yards passing to go with his receiving mark.
Three players reached the triple-1,000 club in the pre-Super Bowl era with Bob Hoernschemeyer, Charley Trippi and George Taliaferro all doing it in careers that ended in 1955.
But no one had come particularly close since the start of the Super Bowl era in 1966 with no other player recording at least 660 yards in each category. The closest any previous player came was Kordell Stewart, who easily surpassed the passing and rushing marks but finished with 658 yards receiving.
Terrelle Pryor had at least 1,500 yards passing and receiving but finished with only 646 as a runner.
Inside the Numbers dives into NFL statistics, streaks and trends each week. For more Inside the Numbers, head here.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
New Orleans Saints tight end Taysom Hill (7) holds on to the ball after a pass completion as New York Jets safety Dean Clark (35) defends during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Seattle Seahawks tight end Eric Saubert, second from left, celebrates after making a two-point conversion during overtime in an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen speaks during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos in Denver, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, left, reacts toward down judge Patrick Turner (13) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson watches during the first half of an NFL football game against the Green Bay Packers Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Huh)
