Van attack killer says he would do it again
I KNEW THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD BE DEAD AND DEATH WAS IRREVERSIBLE. — ALEK MINASSIAN
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 them anon 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 also was 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, aU. S.-based psychiatrist, told court this is another example of a disconnect in Minassian’s thinking, related to his autism. Westphal said Min ass ian 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 “scorecard” 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 recom - mending 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 Minassian repeatedly insisted 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.
For example, in one interview, Minassian said: “I knew that a lot of people would be dead and death was irreversible.” Minassian said he knew killing was wrong and had been told all of his life that killing was wrong.
“I certainly have committed the act of murder and there isn’t any moral justification for it so, for the public eye, it would be extremely upsetting and immoral,” Minassian said at one point.
“It’s, like, an act of killing, it is very bad,” Minassian said at another.
Westphal and his team spent 14 hours interviewing and testing Minassian before his trial.
A Canadian psychiatric team, led by Dr. John Bradford, also examined Minassian. Bradford concluded Minassian did not fit the criteria for a not-criminally-responsible verdict.
In conversations with Westphal’s team, Minassian discussed various motivational factors for his attack. He assigned relative weight to his motivations.
He settled on: Loneliness, an affinity for the murdering-incel Elliott Rodger and support for a brand of incel philosophy known as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) being 40 per cent of his influence; his obsession with mass murderers at 25 per cent; a desire for infamy at 20 per cent; and anxiety over starting a new job at 15 per cent.
Westphal said he didn’t put much stock in Minassian’s reasoning. He said when Minassian talked about his job anxiety and loneliness he seemed more genuine.
Minassian outlined in detail his desire for notoriety.
“It would have been the fact that I had done something, I had brought something to my name,” Minassian said in one interview. “I’ve done something for attention, rather than failing at something.”
Westphal continues on the stand Thursday.
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.