Dad wrongly accused of driving car in Liverpool crowd ‘too scared to return home’
A single dad-of-three who has been wrongly accused of being the Liverpool crash driver has had to move out of his house after a social media ‘witch hunt’.
Peter Cunningham has had threats made against his family and is too scared to leave his home after a post saying he was the driver went viral.
The post came after a driver of a Ford Galaxy rammed into fans at Liverpool FC’s victory parade on Monday evening.
A total of 79 people were left injured, with reports of babies in prams being thrown into the air and supporters becoming trapped under wheels.
A 53-year-old man from West Derby, Liverpool, has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unfit driving through drugs.
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Police have not yet named him, but a viral post wrongly named painter and decorator Peter, who is also from West Derby, as the driver of the vehicle which has left him ‘beside himself’.
He told Metro: ‘I couldn’t stay in my house last night as I am so worried about being attacked.
‘My oldest daughter has been receiving messages saying they wanted to attack us. I’m even scared to walk down the street.’
Peter said he first found out about the post after his brother rang him to let him know, but at first thought he was joking.
But the post has since been shared across Facebook and WhatsApp, leaving him with no way to say he was not at the parade or even in the city centre at the time of the incident.
He said: ‘Police have just told me to take the post down, but how can I? I certainly didn’t make it and it has been shared so much it’s impossible to keep track.’
Posts on local Facebook groups shows his daughter pleading with people to take it down, with commenters even apologising for sharing it.
One woman wrote: ‘I’ve sent his pic to my mates on Whatapp, I feel like an arse now that I’ve sent it saying that’s him, I hope his family are okay. I’m sorry.’
Peter said he now wants to seek legal action against the posters, as his daughters, aged 13, 14 and 21, are still nervous about going home.
He said: ‘I’ve had to remove myself from social media apps just so I don’t get any of the threats, but we are so worried someone is going to jump me if they see me in public.’
Neighbours of the suspect who remains in police custody have described as a ‘helpful family man’.
A neighbour told The Sun: ‘The wife is a really nice woman and they have children. No one can believe this has happened.
‘She first realised when she saw it was her car on the telly, when she saw it being driven at the parade.’
He is believed to have tailgated an ambulance that had been allowed through the cordon to get to someone having a heart attack.
A video shared exclusively with Metro showed a man driving into the crowd ‘deliberately’.
Radoslav Stamboliev, who filmed the clip, told Metro he thought the driver was ‘coming straight for us deliberately, completely straight faced’ and said there were children ‘everywhere’.
He had travelled up from London to watch the game, said he heard accelerating behind him before he jumped out of the way just in time.
He said: ‘I heard this massive engine revving behind me and he started to honk his horn as well.
‘He lunged forward and it felt like he was coming straight for us deliberately, completely straight faced.
‘Because he made so much noise before coming at us most of us moved out of the way in time.’
The incident is not being treated as terrorism by police.
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