Killer would do van attack again, court hears
TORONTO — If Alek Minassian could go back in time to before his deadly Toronto van attack, he would do it all over again but make sure he died at the end of it, he told a psychiatrist.
The shocking admission of the man on trial for 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder, made during a psychiatric evaluation less than a year ago, was revealed in court Wednesday.
Minassian, 28, was asked, if he had a time machine and went back to before his attack on April 23, 2018, when he purposely drove a van along a Toronto sidewalk hitting as many people as possible, would things go differently?
“I would have probably still gone ahead with it and made sure I would have died instead of being arrested,” Minassian said.
He said he would be more selective in his targeting, specifically seeking out female victims between the ages of 18 and 30.
He described this, however, not in the angry rhetoric of the incel movement he claimed to adhere to, but rather for “sensationalism” to add to his killing spree “narrative,” making it more interesting and memorable.
Female victims would be more “consistent” with his incel story, Minassian said. It was something he would get a “pat on the back” for from people on the Internet.
Minassian was also asked during a psychiatric interview, if he was released from prison would he attempt another act of mass murder.
“I’m not sure if I would or not,” Minassian said. “I would certainly think about it. I’m not sure if I would actually go through with it or not.
“I would be hoping to achieve maybe just like another recognition of it or the fact that there is another kill count.”
Dr. Alexander Westphal, a U.S.-based psychiatrist, told court this is another example of a disconnect in Minassian’s thinking related to his autism.
Westphal said Minassian placing high value on anonymous, fleeting comments on web forums he frequented before the killing makes little sense.
“He’s not going back on the Internet again, we know that; he’s not meeting these people in real life, we know that; there’s no one who’s going to come and pat him on the back,” Westphal said.
Westphal said Minassian frequented morbid Internet forums that compared and ranked mass murderers, giving each a “score card” based on grim metrics such as kill count and killed-to-injured ratio.
Westphal told court that Minassian’s autism caused a deep empathy deficit that prevented him from understanding the emotions or feelings of others and caused him to see other people as objects.
Westphal, who specializes in autism, was called to the stand by Minassian’s lawyer, Boris Bytensky, to bolster Minassian’s plea of not guilty and to argue for a verdict of not criminally responsible because his autism caused him to not know it was wrong for him to kill.
Westphal stopped short of specifically recommending a not-criminally-responsible verdict, saying that was a legal decision, but offered his medical opinion that Minassian’s autism created a break with reality that equated to a psychosis, which is the usual reason for such a verdict.
During his cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Joseph Callaghan said that Westphal’s report and his recorded interviews reveal that Minassian repeatedly insisted that he understood what he did was murder and that murder was wrong.
“Mr. Minassian told you many times, in many ways, that he knew his actions were wrong,” Callaghan said. Westphal agreed that Minassian said the words, but believes he did not understand the context behind them.
Callaghan suggested Westphal cherry picked the “weakest” statements from Minassian discussing his level of understanding to put in his report, skipping portions when Minassian was emphatic about knowing what he had done.