This morning, a car exploded after colliding with an inspection booth in Niagara Falls. Both occupants were killed in the explosion, and a border patrol agent was injured.
After the explosion, all four border crossings between New York and Canada were closed, according to the Niagara Gazette. The FBI is investigating the incident, describing it as “fluid” in a tweet:
The vehicle reportedly came from the Canadian side of the border, according to CNN, where its occupants had their passports and licenses checked by Canadian law enforcement. The vehicle was directed to another area for a more thorough search, where it seemingly impacted the inspection booth and detonated.
As of yet, no authorities have speculated as to the perpetrators or motive. CNN quotes Canadian officials, who said:
“This is obviously a very serious situation,“ Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters Wednesday.
“We’re taking this circumstance very seriously but to speculate on the origin of this particular circumstance – the reasons why this may have happened – until we have more accurate information is simply not responsible.”
American officials didn’t have much more to add, only telling CNN:
“We don’t really know too much – just that there was a vehicle trying to come into the US and they shut down both sides of the bridge,” Aaron Ferguson, public information officer for the city of Niagara Falls, told CNN.
An eyewitness spoke to local NBC affiliate WGRZ, saying:
So we were talking up the road, and we see this car coming down towards the border, and he was flying, over 100 miles an hour. There was a car in front of him, he swerved out, went in front of the car, hit the fence, went flying up into the air. He hit — I think there was an elevation part, he went up into the air and we just seen the fireball and that’s all we could see. It was just covered in smoke everywhere.
…
It was going towards Canada.
This eyewitness account contradicts much of what was said to news outlets. In it, the car’s path towards the border was high-speed and impeded only by other vehicles, rather than including a stop for an ID check. The direction of the vehicle also changes here, going from the U.S. to Canada rather than the other way around.
This is a developing story and we will have further updates as they come.
