A city bonded in blood, our innocence lost
A sneaker. A purse. A tiny backpack. A cellphone.
Personal possessions scattered along the path of a rampaging, careering white van, the maniacal and homicidal man at the wheel purposefully mowing down pedestrians.
Heartbreaking artifacts now of a weaponized vehicle attack. And the bodies. My God, the bodies. Two near a pharmacy south of Finch, one at Yonge and Empress, one close to Parkview. A trail of blood and wreckage stretching from Finch to Sheppard on a sunny spring afternoon in Toronto. A day when apparent random terrorism struck in this city.
Any fanciful notion that we are far away from the dogs of war unleashed, from the seething corners of the world where hatred fulminates, buffered from European capitals, from American metropolises where mayhem has been inflicted down through these recent years — that comforting thought died on Monday.
Along with the 10, at least, killed in a mass murder, and the 15, at least, injured, ambulances racing to hospitals and sirens blaring. An abomination of a day. How naive we have been, whistling by the graveyard as carnage was wrought in Manchester, in Nice, in Paris, in Orlando, in London, in Ma- drid, in Toulouse, in Barcelona, in Istanbul, in Berlin, in Stockholm, in Boston. On and on in this new normal. When it’s not guns and makeshift bombs, it’s knives and axes and the thousands of pounds of lurching vehicle steel. Into a promenade crowd, into a Christmas market, into a pop concert, into the subway.
When it’s not a clash of civilization ideology or the desecration of a religion, it’s the madness of a nihilist shooter bristling with assault weapons — Las Vegas, Parkland, Sandy Hook, nursing a grudge. Maddened or mesmerized or mentally ill. And how can you even sift the difference anymore?
On Monday, the horror rose on its hind legs in Toronto, up onto the sidewalk along the city’s main artery, the pulsing core of North York.
The bedlam began around 1:10 p.m., the van racing helterskelter, banging into bus shelters and fire hydrants, mailboxes and benches, but mostly, according to stunned witnesses, mounting the curb and dead-aiming at people. Young people, including students. Old people, basking in rare April warmth.
Hours later, in ghastly scenes along the miscreant’s route, lifeless bodies still lay on the ground, tarps thrown over them.
How many fearful families, unable to reach loved ones, must have scoured those photographs of victims, straining to recognize a shoe, a hoodie, an outstretched arm. Please don’t let it be, don’t let it be …
And the countless many who saw it unfold, from the driver of a TTC bus who raised the first alarm, to other motorists who slammed on their brakes to avoid colliding with the erratic van, to scores of pedestrians jumping out of the way, running for their lives.
“I thought someone had a heart attack,” one driver who found himself close to the van told CP24. “Oh my God. Oh my … it wasn’t a heart attack. This person was intentionally doing this, he was killing everybody. I’m going to be sick … I stopped at Empress, he was just going on …one after the other, all the way down to Yonge and Sheppard, I seen people get hit, one by one … They went down one after another. An old lady, crumpled. I seen a stroller split in half … flying in the air. Ah man, I can’t believe this. Oh my God. The most gruesome … a woman’s leg … blood all over. Ah man, ah man.”
Another bystander: “It was indiscriminate. He was hitting whoever he could hit. He was hitting innocent people.”
And yet another driver who said he actually caught a glimpse of the suspect, through the window. “He looked really angry. But he also looked scared.’’
Rebuking himself, the man admitted to reporters, for not ramming the vehicle when he had the chance. “I regret not doing that. I’m not sure it’s legal. But if I could have stopped him, I wish I would have.”
Screams, chaos, shattering glass raining. some rushing forward to perform CPR, others frozen where they stood with fear. Because you never know how you’ll react and Lord willing you’ll never have to find out.
At Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, which received 10 casualties, one victim was pronounced DOA; others were rushed into surgery. Those who were at the hospital for their own business were corralled into the trauma, distraught by what they were seeing in front of their eyes — mangled bodies and doctors frantically working on them in emergency.
The lucky ones, said John Flengas, EMS acting supervisor, suffered fractures.
“On the job for nearly 21 years, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Most haven’t. Hardly anyone thinks of it happening in their midst. Which is the only way to be, when the odds are infinitesimally teensy. We put our faith in the vast apparatus of national security and shared intelligence agencies, but the lone attacker keeps slipping through, the very randomness of it near impossible to avert. The bitter and radicalized individual who never appears as even a blip on the radar. The mentally deranged loner. The freak fanatic. The angry young man who hates women.
But of course, as the hours wore on, not a single elected official, not a senior cop, allowed the word “terrorism” to cross their lips. Not Mayor John Tory, not the acting police chief. (Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Monday evening: “This incident that happened here on the street behind us was horrendous but it does not appear to be connected in any way to national security.”)
Promptly Tory leapt to the next phase, reminding that Canada is admired for its peaceful multiculturalism. Know what? We don’t need reminding, any more than we did collectively mourning the murder of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial in Ottawa in 2014 and the horrific mass shooting of Muslims at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City last year.
Condolences and assurances, of course. But mealy-mouthed non-speak. Even shorn of death-cult association, devoid of jihad affiliation or political messaging, it’s terrorism.
“From my point of view, it was a terrorist attack,” said the young man who wished he’d crashed the van. The motive may be unknown, the suspect’s ideology unclarified, if such exists, and thus far the suspect may have been just one more male rejected by women — the Twitter chatter — taking out his grievances on innocents.
But we’ve seen the footage captured on phone video.
A remarkably composed cop, standing mere feet from the suspect where his battered van came to a halt near Sheppard, the man extending his arm, stiff, with something in his hand that could have been a firearm. (It was apparently a cellphone but wielded like a gun.) “SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME! KILL ME!’’ he yelled.
All the fingerprints of suicide by cop. But the officer didn’t shoot and the suspect dropped to his knees, flinging his arms in the air.
The cop de-escalated the melodrama, moving in to take the suspect down, cuffing him. On a day of many heroes, that brave cop is at the top of the list, along with the many first responders, paramedics and hospital resources stretched to the limits.
No identifying him, except that the officer is a veteran with 32 Division. Because this is a country, unlike the U.S., laggard in releasing any information.
“He’s shaken up by the whole thing, and shaken up by the magnitude,” Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, told reporters. “He said, ‘you know, I was just doing my job. I wanted to arrest this guy.’ ”
Police named the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, taken into custody. Forensic teams are now faced with the monumental task of processing a crime scene that extends for two kilometres, numerous points of impact to meticulously cull for evidence, a frenzied attack to reconstruct, and that battered Ryder van.
For block after block, cops ministered to the shaken and comforted the traumatized, scared-witless kids, senior citizens, merchants who ventured cautiously outside.
We are often described as a cold-shoulder city where neighbours are strangers. But we are bonded in blood and tragedy now, as perhaps never before.
April 23, 2018: A day that will live in infamy, strewn with the dying and the maimed.