LOS ANGELES (AP) — The driver accused of ramming his car into a crowd outside a Los Angeles nightclub over the weekend was charged with 37 felony counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Fernando Ramirez, 29, was also charged with 37 felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he could face multiple sentences of life imprisonment.
Ramirez is accused of intentionally driving his car onto the sidewalk as partygoers were leaving the Vermont Hollywood venue at the end of a reggae hip-hop event early Saturday. The motive for the attack, which injured 37 people, was still unknown.
A phone number for Ramirez could not be found in an online database search, and the public defender’s office said they have not been appointed to represent him.
“When he drove that car onto that sidewalk, he aimed it at a whole sea of pedestrians," LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in announcing the charges.
The car came to a stop after colliding with several food carts, which became lodged underneath the vehicle, and bystanders attacked the driver, police said. Injuries ranged from minor to serious fractures and lacerations, and some people were briefly trapped beneath the vehicle.
After fleeing the scene, Ramirez was later found to have been shot in the lower back, but authorities have not identified the suspected gunman. Officials said Tuesday they were still looking for the shooter.
“We understand that this brazen act has shaken the community and but for the good grace of God, this could have been a mass casualty incident" Hochman said. He added that eight people suffered “great bodily injury.”
Among those injured, 23 people were taken to hospitals, said Ronnie Villanueva, Interim Fire Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said "it’s truly a miracle that no one was killed that day.”
Ramirez has a criminal history that includes a battery and gang-related charge in 2014, an aggravated battery conviction for a 2019 attack on a Black man at a Whole Foods grocery store in Laguna Beach, California, and a domestic violence charge in 2021, records show.
In the 2019 attack, he was also convicted of a civil rights misdemeanor, and the assault was considered a hate crime because he told police he hated Black people. But a California appeals court in 2021 said he made that statement after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, and only the battery conviction was allowed to stand. Ramirez was released from custody after more than two years in jail and prison.
Ramirez “has proved to be violent to strangers and family alike and clearly has a lack of concern for the safety of others,” Orange County prosecutors said in a court filing for the 2019 attack.
A 2024 drunken driving case and 2022 domestic violence charge were pending at the time of the nightclub crash, according to records.
A vehicle sits on the sidewalk after ramming into a crowd of people waiting to enter a nightclub along a busy boulevard in Los Angeles early Saturday, July 19, 2025 injuring several people. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
An area is roped off after a vehicle rammed into a crowd of people waiting to enter a nightclub along a busy boulevard in Los Angeles early Saturday, July 19, 2025, injuring several people. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
