Attacker kills two, injures five in Quebec
QUEBEC CITY, Que. — Two people were killed and five wounded in Quebec City after being stabbed by a man dressed in medieval clothes and wielding a sword, police said Sunday, noting the attack appeared to be driven by personal motives and not linked to any terror group.
Police arrested a 24-yearold man from Montreal early on Sunday morning, Quebec Police Chief Robert Pigeon said at a news conference.
Sunday afternoon, police identified the victims as François Duchesne, 56, and Suzanne Clermont 61, both from Quebec City.
“Dressed in medieval costume and armed with a Japanese sword, everything leads us to believe he chose his victims at random,” Pigeon said, adding that preliminary information indicated the man was not affiliated with any terror group.
Pigeon said the suspect had come prepared to inflict as
much damage as possible but did not elaborate. Quebec newspaper Le Soleil said the suspect had gasoline containers in his car.
Pigeon declined to comment on the report.
The incident began late Saturday night, on Halloween, inside the city’s famed walled center. Police told nearby residents to stay indoors and made an arrest after a threehour manhunt.
“It is once again, and we believe, an isolated act,” Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume
told reporters. “We need to have a societal debate on the subject (of mental health) because it is becoming more and more difficult to manage.”
In 2017, a Canadian man gunned down six members of a Quebec City mosque and was later sentenced to life in prison.
Quebec’s police chief said on Sunday that the suspect had spoken of conducting an attack “in a medical context” five years ago but was not known to police and did not have a criminal record.