LOS ANGELES (AP) — The driver accused of ramming his car into a crowd outside a Los Angeles nightclub over the weekend was charged with 37 felony counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Fernando Ramirez, 29, was also charged with 37 felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, he could face multiple sentences of life imprisonment.
Ramirez is accused of intentionally driving his car onto the sidewalk as partygoers were leaving the Vermont Hollywood venue at the end of a reggae hip-hop event early Saturday. The motive for the attack, which injured 37 people, was still unknown.
A phone number for Ramirez could not be found in an online database search, and the public defender’s office said they have not been appointed to represent him.
“When he drove that car onto that sidewalk, he aimed it at a whole sea of pedestrians,” LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in announcing the charges.
The car came to a stop after colliding with several food carts, which became lodged underneath the vehicle, and bystanders attacked the driver, police said. Injuries ranged from minor to serious fractures and lacerations, and some people were briefly trapped beneath the vehicle.
After fleeing the scene, Ramirez was later found to have been shot in the lower back, but authorities have not identified the suspected gunman. Officials said Tuesday they were still looking for the shooter.
“We understand that this brazen act has shaken the community and but for the good grace of God, this could have been a mass casualty incident” Hochman said. He added that eight people suffered “great bodily injury.”
Among those injured, 23 people were taken to hospitals, said Ronnie Villanueva, Interim Fire Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said “it’s truly a miracle that no one was killed that day.”
Ramirez has a criminal history that includes a battery and gang-related charge in 2014, an aggravated battery conviction for a 2019 attack on a Black man at a Whole Foods grocery store in Laguna Beach, California, and a domestic violence charge in 2021, records show.
In the 2019 attack, he was also convicted of a civil rights misdemeanor, and the assault was considered a hate crime because he told police he hated Black people. But a California appeals court in 2021 said he made that statement after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, and only the battery conviction was allowed to stand. Ramirez was released from custody after more than two years in jail and prison.
Ramirez “has proved to be violent to strangers and family alike and clearly has a lack of concern for the safety of others,” Orange County prosecutors said in a court filing for the 2019 attack.
A 2024 drunken driving case and 2022 domestic violence charge were pending at the time of the nightclub crash, according to records.
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