British po­lice were hold­ing a 53-year-old man on Tues­day over a col­li­sion that turned a joy­ous soc­cer cel­e­bra­tion in Liv­er­pool in­to tragedy and sent more than two dozen peo­ple to hos­pi­tals, four of them in very se­ri­ous con­di­tion.

Mersey­side Po­lice said they are not treat­ing the in­ci­dent as ter­ror­ism and are not look­ing for oth­er sus­pects. The force has not iden­ti­fied the ar­rest­ed dri­ver. Po­lice in Britain usu­al­ly do not name sus­pects un­til they are charged.

De­tec­tives were work­ing to piece to­geth­er how a mini­van ploughed in­to crowds pack­ing a nar­row street, just af­ter the play­ers of Liv­er­pool Foot­ball Club had cel­e­brat­ed the Pre­mier League cham­pi­onship with an open-topped bus pa­rade.

Wa­ter Street, near the Riv­er Mersey in the heart of the city, was cor­doned off by po­lice tape, and a blue tent had been erect­ed on the road strewn with the de­tri­tus of cel­e­bra­tion, in­clud­ing bot­tles, cans and Liv­er­pool flags.

Liv­er­pool City Metro May­or Steve Rother­am said four of the in­jured were “very, very ill in hos­pi­tal.”

The North West Am­bu­lance Ser­vice said a to­tal of 47 peo­ple were in­jured, of whom 27 were tak­en to lo­cal hos­pi­tals, while 20 were treat­ed at the scene of the crash for mi­nor in­juries. There were no re­port­ed deaths.

Four of the in­jured are chil­dren, said am­bu­lance ser­vice spokesman Dave Kitchin.

A child was among four vic­tims trapped un­der the van that was lift­ed by fire­fight­ers to free them.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Liv­er­pudlians had crammed the streets of the port city in north­west Eng­land on Mon­day to cel­e­brate the team win­ning Eng­land’s Pre­mier League this sea­son for a record-ty­ing 20th top-flight ti­tle.

As the pa­rade was wrap­ping up, a mini­van turned down a cor­doned-off street just off the pa­rade route and ploughed in­to the sea of fans wrapped in their red Liv­er­pool scarves, jer­seys and oth­er mem­o­ra­bil­ia. A video on so­cial me­dia showed the van strike a man, toss­ing him in the air, be­fore veer­ing in­to a larg­er crowd, where it ploughed a path through the group and pushed bod­ies along the street be­fore com­ing to a stop.

“It was ex­treme­ly fast,” said Har­ry Rashid, who was with his wife and two young daugh­ters as the mini­van passed by them. “Ini­tial­ly, we just heard the pop, pop, pop of peo­ple just be­ing knocked off the bon­net of a car.”

Rashid said the crowd charged the halt­ed ve­hi­cle and be­gan smash­ing win­dows.

“But then he put his foot down again and just ploughed through the rest of them, he just kept go­ing,” Rashid said. “It was hor­ri­ble. And you could hear the bumps as he was go­ing over the peo­ple.”

Po­lice quick­ly iden­ti­fied the sus­pect as a white lo­cal man to pre­vent mis­in­for­ma­tion from flood­ing so­cial me­dia, Rother­am said.

Rother­am said po­lice act­ed ap­pro­pri­ate­ly to tamp down on­line spec­u­la­tion about the per­son re­spon­si­ble as false ru­mours spread rapid­ly on­line of there be­ing an­oth­er in­ci­dent.

“So­cial me­dia is a cesspit,” he said, re­fer­ring to the con­jec­ture and mis­in­for­ma­tion. “It was de­signed to in­flame. It was de­signed to di­vide. The mes­sage of hate doesn’t go down well here.”

Last sum­mer, a teen in the near­by town of South­port killed three girls in a stab­bing ram­page at a dance class and wound­ed 10 oth­ers, in­clud­ing two adults. An in­cor­rect name of the sus­pect was spread on so­cial me­dia and peo­ple said he was an asy­lum-seek­er. In fact, he had been born in the U.K. Ri­ot­ing spread across Eng­land and North­ern Ire­land, tar­get­ing Mus­lims and refugees in ho­tels for asy­lum-seek­ers, last­ing about a week.

Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer said he was ap­palled by the tragedy as he hailed the brav­ery of res­cuers and said the coun­try’s thoughts were with the city and its peo­ple.

“Scenes of joy turned to ut­ter hor­ror and dev­as­ta­tion,” Starmer said Tues­day. “Liv­er­pool stands to­geth­er and the whole coun­try stands with Liv­er­pool.”

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jill Law­less and Bri­an Mel­ley in Lon­don con­tributed to this re­port.

LIV­ER­POOL, Eng­land (AP) —