Man Held in Nottingham Attacks That Killed 3 and Wounded 3

A man was arrested early Tuesday on the suspicion of murder after three people, including two students, were found dead in the city of Nottingham, in central England. The arrest followed a series of attacks Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain called a “shocking incident.”

The police said they were first alerted just after 4 a.m. about two people who had been “stabbed in the street and were unresponsive.” These two people would later be identified as 19-year-old students at the University of Nottingham.

Police officers were then called to a nearby street in the city center, where three other people were found wounded after a driver attempted to run them over with a van, according to a statement by the Nottinghamshire Police. Soon after, the body of a man in his 50s who had been killed with a knife was found in a third street. The police said Tuesday that they believe that the van belonged to that man and that it had been stolen from him.

A 31-year-old man was arrested in connection with the deaths. The three other injured people, including one man who was in critical condition, were receiving treatment in a hospital, the police said. Police described them only as “members of the public.”

“This is a tragic series of events which has led to the lives of three innocent people being taken,” Chief Constable Kate Meynell of the Nottinghamshire Police said in the statement. She said that the authorities were “keeping an open mind” as they gathered evidence to determine a motive behind the attack.

“Currently, we do not believe there is anyone else involved in this incident,” the chief constable said.

The University of Nottingham, in a statement, confirmed the “sudden and unexpected” deaths of two of its students. “We are shocked and devastated by the news and our thoughts are with those affected, their families and friends,” it said.

From the early morning and into Tuesday evening, several main roads were closed for the investigation and Nottingham’s tram service had been partly suspended.

The authorities gave no indication whether the alarming succession of violence was connected to terrorism, with the police saying only that they were working with a team of detectives and counterterrorism police to “establish the facts” in an ongoing investigation that was still in its “early stages.”

“The police must be given the time to undertake their work,” Mr. Sunak wrote in a Twitter post, expressing his condolences for the families of the victims.

One witness told the BBC that she saw the van assault.

“I’m shaky — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the witness, Lynn Haggitt, in an interview with the broadcaster. She said that she saw a driver in a van check his rearview mirror before he accelerated into two people. “The woman went on the curb and the man went up in the air,” she said.

Ben Bradley, who leads the Nottinghamshire County Council and represents a nearby town in Parliament, wrote in a statement posted to Twitter: “To see this level of violence on our city’s streets is unimaginable and emotional for everyone who lives and works here.”

“I’m grateful to the police and other authorities who have stepped in and made an arrest,” he added.

Nottingham, a two-hour train ride north of London, is a city of more than 300,000 people at the center of an urban area of over 750,000. It was the birthplace of Raleigh bicycles and John Player cigarettes, as well as the hometown of the fashion designer Paul Smith and the writer Alan Sillitoe, whose first novel became the film “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.”

The cycle factory depicted in that film closed decades ago, and others have also departed. A spate of gang-related crime in the city repeatedly made national headlines in the 2000s. But it remains an economic hub, with two large universities and major employers including the pharmacy chain Boots.

A vigil was held in Nottingham on Tuesday evening. And condolences came from as far a field as France, with President Emmanuel Macron writing on Twitter, “Our thoughts go to the victims of the tragic events in Nottingham, the injured, the families. We share the grief of our British friends and stand by their side.”

Peter Robins contributed reporting.