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In the Pride parade one person is killed and another wounded goes as a driver against those in attendance.
A member of a men’s choir group inadvertently picked up the truck along with members of the choir as the South Florida Pride Parade began on Saturday, killing one member of the group and seriously injuring another, the group’s director said, leading to initial speculation was a hate crime against the gay community.
The incident happened at the beginning of the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride Parade and festival, in celebration of the LGBTQ, in a town near Fort Lauderdale.
The white pickup truck was lined up with other floats for the parade, rushed and collided with pedestrians before crashing into a plant nursery, Local 10 News reported.
Wilton Manors Deputy Mayor Paul Rolli and Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said Sunday that the first investigation shows the accident.
The 77-year-old driver was arrested, but police said no charges had been filed and the investigation was underway.
“Early investigation now appears to have been a tragic accident, but no one has said what it is in the end,” Rollik told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The driver and the victim were members of the Fort Lauderdale Gay Men’s Chorus family, a group of up to 25 members of the elderly.
“Our members of the Chorus were injured and the driver is also a member of the Chorus family. As far as I know, this was not an attack on the LGBTQ community,” President Justin Knight said in a statement on Sunday, “as an unfortunate accident.”
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis and other city officials were in a float in front of the Rolli choir truck on a stage preparing the floats.
Trantalis said the truck driver suddenly sped up when he was told he was next at the parade, hitting the victims. The driver continued on all traffic lanes, eventually colliding with a fence on the other side of the street, police said.
“People were really overwhelmed and some people were crying,” Rollik said, explaining that the accident happened in an area where floats were lined up, so there wasn’t so much parade.
Fort Lauderdale police said they have not made any arrests and are conducting an in-depth investigation with the FBI, and said in a statement that they are “examining and evaluating all options.”
Trantalis, the first gay mayor of Fort Lauderdale, initially told reporters that the action was intentional, exacerbating the confusion Saturday night.
“It terrified me and those around me … I was afraid it might have been intentional from what I saw from scratch,” he said in a Twitter appearance on Sunday.
“As events continue to link together, a picture of an accident that was uncontrollably taken care of by a truck is emerging.”
There are flowers in the spot where a driver hit the audience at the beginning of a Pride parade, killing one man and seriously injuring another. [Lynne Sladky/AP Photo]
Wilton Manors is a narrow community near Fort Lauderdale. Photos and videos of the scene with U.S. Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz tearfully showed that they were convertible at the parade.
In an appearance Saturday night, Wasserman Schultz said he was safe, but “very excited and devastated because he lost his life.”
“I am very happy with what happened at this celebration,” he said. “May the memory of a lost life be a blessing.”
June is Pride Month, reminiscent of the June 1969 uprising after a police raid on gay patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. He was the driving force behind the gay rights movement.
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