Nathan Louis Campbell Arrested in Venice Driving Murder; Victim Identified

Nathan Louis Campbell is the suspect in the driving attack in Venice Beach, Calif., that left one person dead and 11 others wounded. Police arrested Campbell on Sunday.
Nathan Louis Campbell Arrested in Venice Driving Murder; Victim Identified
Police and fire officials assist an injured pedestrian at the scene where a car drove through a packed afternoon crowd along the Venice Beach boardwalk in Los Angeles, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013. At least a dozen people were injured, two of them critically, according to police. (AP Photo/Venice311.org, Alex Thompson)
Jack Phillips
8/4/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

Nathan Louis Campbell is the suspect in the driving attack in Venice Beach, Calif., which left one person dead and 11 others wounded. 

Police on Sunday arrested a man in connection with a Saturday incident involving a car driving into crowds of people in Venice Beach. A woman was killed and 11 more were injured.

Nathan Campbell, 38, was detained and is being held on $1 million bail after he turned himself in about two hours after the incident, according to KTLA-TV. He will soon be charged with murder, officials said.

“There no indication that he knew anybody that he hit,” LAPD Cmdr. Andy Smith told CNN. “It looks like this guy wanted to run over a bunch of people. One guy bent on doing evil.”

In the spree, a woman from Italy, Alice Gruppioni, a 32-year-old on her honeymoon, was left dead. Her husband was injured.

After hitting around a dozen people, the driver of a black car allegedly abandoned the vehicle and ran off, said police.

Police said there doesn’t appear to be a connection between the suspect and any of the people he hit.

“There was people kind of stumbling around, blood dripping down their legs looking confused not knowing what had happened, people screaming,” witness Louisa Hodge told the Associated Press. “It was blocks and blocks of people just strewn across the sidewalk,” said Hodge.

Witness Laura Blackburn said that the driver appeared to hit people on the sidewalk purposefully.

“The boardwalk was packed with people, and he sped up and purposefully -- it looked like purposefully -- was just swerving back and forth to run over as many people as he could,” said Blackburn, according to CNN.

Police said that if the suspect was intending to kill or injure people, his motive is still unknown.

“I heard a big ‘boom, boom,’ like the sound of someone going up and down the curb, it was super loud,” witness Alex Hagan, 22, told AP.

According to security video and witness accounts, the driver of the vehicle parked next to a hotel and walked out to the boardwalk two times before he got into his car. He swerved around yellow poles that are meant to prevent vehicles from going into pedestrian areas.

Accounts said the driver moved from side to side and ran straight into victims.

Two middle-aged women were also hit, Hagan said.

Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter with 15 years experience who started as a local New York City reporter. Having joined The Epoch Times' news team in 2009, Jack was born and raised near Modesto in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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