AKIPRESS.COM - Suddenly, there was a car where no car should be: plowing through the sidewalk crowds that had swelled in Times Square on a spectacular sun-filled day. And it was moving fast, NYTimes reported.

By the time it rammed into a bollard, an 18-year-old woman was dead, 22 other people were injured and the heart of Manhattan had been turned into a scene of panic and carnage. The car, a maroon Honda Accord, had traveled along the sidewalk for more than three blocks.

“They were screaming, yelling, running,” said Sharief White, a vendor who was selling T-shirts and hats at Seventh Avenue and 44th Street and saw the Honda speed into the crowd. “It was running over everybody that was in front of the car.”

Unfolding in one of the city’s most crowded and high-profile areas, the episode instantly raised the specter of terrorism. An attempted car-bomb attack in Times Square in 2010 remains a potent memory for many, and recent terrorist attacks overseas have shown the damage that vehicles can do when used as weapons.