A car has been caught on CCTV apparently accelerating towards a Jewish family as they crossed a road in Salford, in an incident that has prompted widespread calls for police to investigate it as a hate crime.
The footage, shared by Manchester Scoop, was recorded at around 10am on Monday 19 May on Leicester Road in Higher Broughton. It shows the vehicle stopping at a green light without moving, waiting as the light turns red, and then accelerating forward at speed precisely as the family stepped out to cross. No injuries were reported.
The apparent deliberateness of the sequence — stopping on green, then moving on red as pedestrians entered the crossing — has led many viewers to conclude the manoeuvre was intentional. The clip spread rapidly online, with community figures and social media users calling on Greater Manchester Police and the government to treat the matter as a hate crime requiring urgent investigation. Some directed their appeals directly to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, amid wider concern about rising antisemitic incidents across the country.
The location is significant. Higher Broughton sits within one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in Britain. According to the 2011 census, 14.2 per cent of residents in Broughton identified their religion as Jewish, compared with 3.3 per cent across Salford as a whole and 0.5 per cent across England — a proportion that has grown considerably in the years since.
Monday’s incident is not the first to unsettle the local community in recent months. In March, armed police were deployed to Leicester Road itself after reports of a suspicious individual in the area prompted alarm among Jewish residents, though the incident was later found to involve a man wearing a weighted gym vest.
Greater Manchester Police had not issued a public statement regarding the CCTV footage at the time of publication.
