A vehicle plowed through a group of people near Venice Beach, Calif., killing a woman, in an incident caught on security video cameras. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.
By Miguel Almaguer and M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
A California man was held on suspicion of murder after a car plowed through Los Angeles' popular Venice Beach boardwalk Saturday night, killing a young Italian woman in the U.S. for her honeymoon and injuring 11 other people, authorities said Sunday.
Police said Nathan Louis Campbell, 38, of Los Angeles, was being held on $1 million bail after he fled the scene in a dark sedan in an incident that was captured on security camera video.
The video shows a man parking a black car along the boardwalk, watching for several minutes and then speeding into the crowd about 6 p.m. (9 p.m. ET).?It shows the car careening around barriers intended to block automobiles from reaching the boardwalk's pedestrian area.
Alice Gruppioni, 32, of Italy was killed, the Los Angeles County coroner's office told NBC News. Eleven other people, all of them believed to have been pedestrians on the boardwalk, were injured, one of them critically.
The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Gruppioni, of Bologna in northern Italy, was married July 20 to Christian Casadei, an architect from Cesena.
Casadei suffered minor injuries and was at his wife's side when she died, it said, quoting Giuseppe Perrone, the Italian consul general in Los Angeles, who accompanied Casadei to the hospital.
Perrone told ANSA in a telephone interview that Casadei and his new wife were strolling along the boardwalk when the car came barreling through.
"We were walking, we were happy, we were on our honeymoon and everything, and suddenly everything changed," Casadei said, according to Perrone.
"I still can't believe it, and I don't even remember exactly what happened. It's all very confusing."
Perrone described Casadei as "destroyed and in disbelief."
Witnesses said it appeared that the driver took aim at people on the boardwalk.
"All I saw was a car emerging from the crowd driving southbound on the boardwalk just plowing through whomever was in its way," said Scott Levinsky, a vendor at the packed tourist attraction.
"We're never going to forget that moment," he said. "I'm still thankful to God that we are still alive and surviving."
Chelsea Alvarez, who was visiting the boardwalk Saturday night, said the scene was "really bad."
"There was tables, there was people everywhere, blood everywhere," she said. "There was scattered stuff. It was horrible. It was the ugliest scene I've ever seen."
Alvarez told NBC Los Angeles that her grandmother Linda Alvarez, 75, was among those hit, suffering broken ribs.
"She's good. She's just resting. She's sleeping right now," Alvarez said.
Los Angeles City Council member Mike Bonin told the station that the barriers in place at the Venice boardwalk are insufficient. He said he would ask the council to move quickly to install new barriers before the end of the year.
Gruppioni was the daughter of Valerio Gruppioni, president of Sira Group, based in Bologna, one of the world's largest producers of radiators for heating. Bologna FC, a club in the top flight of Italian soccer, confirmed her death in a statement offering condolences to Valerio Gruppioni, a former president of the club.
"President (Albano) Guaraldi and all of Bologna FC are with the Gruppioni family in this time of unspeakable pain," the club said.
In a statement Sunday, rival club AC Milan, one of the world's premier teams, expressed its "condolences to former Bologna president Valerio Gruppioni and his family following the passing of his daughter Alice."
Watch US News videos on NBCNews.com
Gil Aegerter and Hasani Gittens of NBC News contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Sun Aug 4, 2013 2:48 PM EDT
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