A member of a men’s chorus group unintentionally slammed into fellow members of the choir at the start of a Pride parade in South Florida Saturday evening, killing one member of the group and seriously injuring another, according to police.
According to police, the 77-year-old male, “was a participant who had ailments preventing him from walking the duration of the parade and was selected to drive as the lead vehicle.”
Police say the 77-year-old man remained at the scene and was cooperative with investigators during the investigation and the driver showed no signs of impairment.
“This was not an attack on the LGBTQ community,” Chorus President Justin Knight said in a statement Sunday, saying it was “an unfortunate accident.”
Dean Trantalis, who is Fort Lauderdale’s first openly gay mayor, told reporters Saturday, the act was deliberate, but walked back those claims on Sunday, saying that it ‘terrorized’ him.
“It terrorized me and all around me… I feared it could be intentional based on what I saw from mere feet away,” he said in a Twitter statement Sunday. “As the facts continue to be pieced together, a picture is emerging of an accident in which a truck careened out of control.”
Trantalis did not apologize, nor did he explain why he felt the need to jump to conclusions about motives for the crash.
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