LONDON (AP) — Liverpool is no stranger to triumph on the sports field, or tragedy off it.
The northwest English port city experienced both joy and anguish on Monday: As fans lined the streets to celebrate Liverpool Football Club winning the Premier League title this season, a minivan crashed into the crowd. Police said more than 60 people were hurt, with 11 still hospitalized Tuesday. Police arrested the 53-year-old driver on suspicion of attempted murder but said they are not treating it as an act of terrorism.
Euphoria – at least for those who support Liverpool FC over its local rival Everton – turned in an instant to chaos and grief. Within hours, came pledges of resilience and unity for a city that has weathered so much before — including deadly disasters at two stadiums hosting Liverpool games in the 1980s.
“It’s supposed to be celebrations and instead the day is always going to be remembered for this now, instead of the trophy parade like it was supposed to,” said Aaron Jones, a 28-year-old fan who was nearby and saw the emergency response.
“Because of disasters we’ve had in the past, everyone’s just connecting it to the same sort of group of disasters, you know what I mean? It should have been happy times, but (it’s) been tainted.”
A proud and battered city
Liverpool was one of the world’s busiest ports in the 18th and 19th centuries, but endured decades of hardship in the 20th. It weathered World War II bombing, the decline of its once-bustling docks and mass unemployment in the 1980s.
Those tough years reinforced the city’s underdog self-image, as a northern, heavily Irish-influenced city far from British centers of power in London.
Renewal for the city that gave birth to The Beatles has come in recent decades through reinventing Liverpool as a magnet for tourists seeking culture, nightlife — and soccer.
Both the city’s Premier League teams have legions of fans around the world. Liverpool FC, in particular, is one of the most decorated teams in global soccer, with dozens of British and international trophies to its name.
But the success has come alongside tragedy for a club whose anthem is “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
On Tuesday, Liverpool FC’s homepage offered thoughts to those affected by the crash and referenced the disasters at Heysel and Hillsborough stadiums that had a profound impact on the club and its identity.
A tragedy in Brussels
On May 29, 1985, Liverpool played Italian team Juventus in the European Cup final at Heysel Stadium in Brussels.
Crowd disorder before kickoff culminated in a surge by Liverpool fans into an adjacent stand containing mostly Juventus supporters. In the ensuing chaos, some were trampled or suffocated to death as they tried to flee the violence and others died when a retaining wall collapsed.
A total of 39 people — 32 from Italy, four from Belgium, two from France and one from Northern Ireland — died and around 600 were injured.
Liverpool fans were largely blamed for the violence. Twenty-six were arrested, and 14 of them convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Many also attributed the disorder to the dilapidated condition of Heysel, a 55,000-capacity structure with outdated standing-room only stands, flimsy fences and crumbling walls inside and outside, as well as poor organization from police and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.
The 40th anniversary of the disaster is on Thursday.
Haunted by Hillsborough
Four years later, a crush during a game against Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield left 97 Liverpool fans dead.
The catastrophe unfolded when more than 2,000 Liverpool fans were allowed to flood into a standing-room section behind a goal with the stadium already nearly full for the game. The victims were smashed against metal anti-riot fences or trampled underfoot, and many suffocated.
The tragedy of Britain’s deadliest sports disaster was compounded by a coverup into the cause and missteps by police.
With hooliganism rife in English soccer throughout the 1980s and memories of Heysel still fresh, a false narrative that blamed drunken, ticketless and rowdy Liverpool fans was created by police and spread by sections of the media.
Bereaved families campaigned for years to correct the record, finally securing an inquest jury’s 2016 verdict that police and emergency services were to blame for the disaster and the victims were “unlawfully killed.”
The city has a long memory. To this day many Liverpudlians refuse to read tabloid newspaper The Sun, which ran stories alleging that fans had attacked police and robbed the dead.
United in grief
Many Liverpudlians — whether Liverpool or Everton fans — pledged that the city would come together after the latest tragedy.
Everton FC issued a statement of condolence, setting aside rivalry to say: “As a city we stand together.”
Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said he’d heard multiple accounts of people opening their doors so distraught strangers could take shelter in their homes amid Monday’s chaos.
“There were offers of lifts in cars so that people could get to their destinations,” he said. “This is the true humanity of the great people of this city.”
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Associated Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha in Liverpool, England, contributed to this story.
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