From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmow somebody ↔ down phrasal verb informal1 PMKILLto kill large numbers of people at the same time, especially by shooting them The soldiers were mown down by machine-gun fire.2 to kill someone by driving into them fast He was sentenced to two years in prison for mowing down a nine-year old girl. → mow→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
mow down• But he did not mow her down.• But if your men attack we shall mow them down.• We have grown too good, kind and sensitive to mow them down with machine guns, starve them out of existence. 