Truck Drives Onto Children's Soccer Field in Kansas; Two Killed Including a Six-Year-Old, 11 Injured

A six-year-old boy and a 35-year-old man were killed when a truck drove onto the field during a children's soccer game in Wichita, in the US state of Kansas. Another 11 people were injured in Saturday's incident, authorities said.

By early Sunday morning, the possible motive for the incident had not become clear, but the incident had already drawn wide attention across the United States. Wichita police gave details of the incident at a briefing, updating the preliminary information.

According to police, the driver at the center of the incident is a 34-year-old woman from Garden City, Kansas. The distance from that city to the scene is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive. Authorities did not immediately release the name of the woman or of any of the deceased.

Police said the woman was taken into custody on Saturday after driving through the field while a youth soccer game was under way at the Stryker Sports Complex at around 3:30 in the afternoon.

After an emergency call, police and paramedics arrived at the scene and found the truck on the west field of the complex. Wichita Police Captain Aaron Moses told the media that two children were also inside the truck with the driver.

Moses also said the woman has a valid driving license and has no outstanding warrants against her. This information has deepened the questions about the motive for the incident, since police initially reported nothing unusual in her record.

The deceased boy and man were both residents of McPherson, Kansas, about an hour's drive north of Wichita. Police said the two deceased were not related to each other.

Among the injured, 10 people's injuries were serious but not life-threatening, police said. The injured include children aged five, eight and nine, as well as adults aged 28 to 68. The eleventh injured person is a 61-year-old woman, in whose case police reported a medical problem not related to injury.

Competitive youth soccer club McPherson City FC said in a Facebook post on Saturday that they had been subjected to 'an unimaginable tragedy' at the Stryker Soccer Complex. The club asked everyone to keep all those involved in their thoughts and prayers and called for time to be given for mourning and healing, mentioning the need for privacy and respect in coping with a loss of this scale. The post ended by saying, 'Hold your loved ones tight tonight.'

The municipal government of McPherson also said in a separate Facebook post that their community is in pain and that they stand together and in support of one another. The post called to 'stay strong, McPherson' and urged people to stand by one another and be kind.

The Stryker Sports Complex announced that all events there have been canceled until further notice. The complex asked people to keep all affected individuals and families in their thoughts and prayers and called on people to avoid the complex area to give emergency workers room to work. It also said in the announcement that information about future events would be provided when available.

Meanwhile, the Kansas State High School Activities Association also postponed the third-place deciding and championship flag football games scheduled for later on Saturday at that complex. The organization expressed condolences to the families and teams affected by the incident and said it plans to announce the details of the rescheduled games on Monday.

Saturday's incident brought that sports complex to the center of a major and deadly case for the second time in less than 26 years. In December 2000, on the snow-covered field of this complex near the corner of North Greenwich Road and East 29th Street, two brothers, Jonathan and Reginald Carr, were convicted of shooting five people and killing four; according to court documents and news reports, that crime spree also involved robbery, rape and torture. In that case, known as the 'Wichita massacre,' the two brothers were sentenced to death, and in July this year Kansas Governor Laura Kelly rejected their application to commute their death sentences to life imprisonment. The entire area now awaits clarity on the motive in the investigation of this incident.