National Post (National Edition)
‘HE JUST STARTED HITTING EVERYBODY’
10 DEAD, 15 INJURED AFTER DRIVER MOWS DOWN PEDESTRIANS ON BUSY TORONTO SIDEWALK
HE STARTED GOING DOWN ON THE SIDEWALK AND CRUMBLING DOWN PEOPLE ONE BY ONE. HE JUST DESTROYED SO MANY PEOPLE’S LIVES. — ALI SHAKER, WHO WAS DRIVING DOWN YONGE STREET WHEN THE VAN BEGAN TO STRIKE PEDESTRIANS
IT WAS AWFUL. BRUTAL. JUST PEOPLE EVERYWHERE.
The end was valiant and restrained as surely as the incident itself was sickening and deadly. Toronto police say 10 people are dead and 15 injured after a rental van mowed through pedestrians along a busy Yonge Street on Monday afternoon, stopping for nothing: not people, not a bus shelter, not fire hydrants, not a mailbox.
The dead and injured, some knocked over, some run over, some dragged and some pinned, lay in its wake as others rushed to help the wounded. At press time, police had offered no clue to a motive.
When the van did stop, the driver emerged and, according to video by a passerby, begged police to shoot him dead.
At least three times the man made a sharp, jerking motion with his arm — drawing his hand from his side, and pointing it menacingly at officers with a dark object in his hand, like the drawing of a handgun in the Wild West.
Instead of gunfire an officer called: “Get down.”
The man’s answer was to do the motion again. “Kill me,” he said.
“No, come on, get down,” an officer shouted.
Standing ramrod straight, dressed in dark clothing, the man continued to point whatever he was holding at the officer. “I have a gun in my pocket,” he added.
“I don’t care, get down. Get down or you’ll be shot,” an officer called back.
The man nonetheless walked toward an officer, still pointing what he had in his hand — but the officer facing him stood his ground, walking sideways before moving closer; the man backed away briefly before tossing what he had been holding and putting both arms over his head and kneeling.
Police did not provide details on the suspect’s identity or any charges that might be pending. A law enforcement source told the National Post the driver is a 25-yearold Canadian citizen named Alek Minassian. Police would not officially confirm this.
While a manhunt for the driver was averted, the painful reality of the carnage and pain left behind revealed itself in 911 calls, social media posts and interviews with shocked and traumatized witnesses. Not long after, orange tarps and blankets covering the dead dotted the street, and shoes, bags and personal effects littered the area.
“He just started hitting everybody, man, he hit every single person on the sidewalk, anybody in his way he would hit,” one troubled witness told reporters.
“One by one, one by one. He’s going 60-70 kilometres on the sidewalk.”
The events took place near the intersections of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue East around 1.30 p.m. After an unseasonably cold spell, Monday’s warm sunshine drew many outdoors and onto a bustling street of stores, restaurants, churches and offices.
Andy Jibb was working in his home office on the 27th floor of a condo building near Yonge and Empress when the van went by.
“I just heard screaming and I ran out to my balcony and I saw the van, still heading south on the sidewalk. I heard something being hit,” he said.
“From my balcony I could see five or six people on the ground. There was a body at this corner, and another one,” he said, pointing towards Yonge and Empress. “And there was like four bodies in Mel Lastman square. Three of them are still there right now and one of them was put in an ambulance.
“I could see the van heading down south, and it was like he had the brakes on. I could hear the tires squealing. It was like brake-torque, like he was pumping on the brakes and the gas at the same time.”
Toronto Police Services Deputy Chief Peter Yuen said police are still working on an active, complex investigation and will be for some time.
“I can assure the public all our available resources have been brought in to investigate this tragic situation,” he said at a dinner-hour press conference.
At the time of the incident, officials from the G7 group of major industrial countries were meeting in Toronto as a prelude to the G7 meeting in June in Quebec.
A government source said the news was relayed to G7 officials participating in a public safety meeting in Toronto but there was little or no impact on proceedings and there was no visible enhancement of security.
While police and Toronto Mayor John Tory said it was too early to speculate on cause or motive, some witnesses were not shy about offering their impressions.
“Pretty sure I just witnessed a terror attack. People hit all over the place,” Phil Zullo posted on Instagram. Zullo was driving north on Yonge when he said he saw police chasing a vehicle.
“I must have seen about five, six people being resuscitated by bystanders and by ambulance drivers,” Zullo said. “It was awful. Brutal. Just people everywhere. People — shoes and shirts and ball caps on the floor.”
A visibly shaken Amir Farokhpour, 28, said he was taking a break from his furniture store job when he saw the van coming toward the sidewalk on the east side of Yonge, about two blocks south of Finch.
“He on purpose hit this guy here,” he said, referring to a body of a victim that appeared to be in his 40s. A pedestrian trying to cross the street was also hit. “He flew, I would say, a good four or five metres. So he hit him pretty hard.
“Then he tried to hit some ladies right here,” he said, pointing to the sidewalk in front of his store. “But he couldn’t hit them because there was a curb here.
“I was here for the guy but he was dead in five, six seconds. I tried helping him, but he was dead. There was not much we could do.
“It’s hard. It’s the first time I’ve seen a dead body. I couldn’t feel my legs and hands before. I still can’t feel my hands. I was just going to the convenience store. It could have been me, you know,” Farokhpour said.
It was a difficult day even for those who were all too familiar with injuries and death.
Dr. Dan Cass, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Executive at Sunnybrook Hospital, addressed media at 5:10 p.m. He described how, shortly after the incident, Toronto’s lead trauma centre was put on “code orange,” a hospital alert to prepare for mass casualties.
Labs, blood banks, the intensive care unit and operating rooms prepared to receive 10 victims; two arrived without vitals and were pronounced dead. Additional critical care nurses have since been called in. All of the victims at Sunnybrook were adults.
Dr. Cass called the tragedy “unprecedented,” but something hospital staff drill for. He praised the efforts of EMS and the Sunnybrook team, and expressed condolences for the families.
Not all of the injured have been identified, and not all the families have been notified.
“I’m not sure the last time Sunnybrook had a code orange,” said Dr. Cass.
Other victims were taken to St. Michael’s Hospital and North York General Hospital.
Pedestrians along the route tried to help the injured.
Robert Little, an administrative liaison to a superintendent at the Toronto District School Board, was outside the board’s headquarters for lunch when a security guard waved him over, knowing he is on the board’s Medical Emergency Response Team. They grabbed an AED and ran out to where a woman, about 40, was lying unconscious, unrecognizable because of the blood.
Little gave her chest compressions for about five minutes, he said, and used scissors to cut off her clothing to apply the AED. Medics showed up, took over, and later covered the woman’s body with an orange blanket.
On Twitter, Lisa Adams thanked a passerby for saving her mother.
“I would like to thank the person who saved my mother’s life today in front of Shoppers Drug Mart on Yonge Street at Madison,” Adams wrote. “She is 78 she was with her dog she is alive because of you.”