Canada van driver who mowed down10 charged with murder
A van driver who ran over 10 people when he plowed onto a busy Toronto sidewalk was charged with murder ton Tuesday, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged a rattled nation not to live in fear after the "senseless attack."
Police said the suspect, 25year-old Alek Minassian, was not known to them before Monday's carnage in Canada's most populous city, which also left 15 people injured. He also was not in the crosshairs of intelligence and security agencies, leading Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale to sideline the theory of a terror attack such as those carried out by extremists in London, Nice and other major cities.
"On the basis of all available information at the present time, there would appear to be no national security connection to this particular incident," Goodale said. But authorities said the incident during the busy lunch hour Monday was undoubtedly deliberate, and Minassian -- his head shaved, and in a white police jumpsuit -- was charged with first degree murder in a brief court appearance.
He also faces multiple counts of attempted murder over those injured in the incident.Two South Koreans were among the dead, a foreign ministry official in Seoul told AFP, adding that another of the country's citizens seriously injured.As the wounded recovered in local hospitals, federal, provincial and local investigators were probing the case, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said.
"Canadians across the country are shocked and saddened by this senseless attack," Trudeau told a news conference. But, he added: "We must not start living in fear and uncertainty every day as we go about our daily lives." Students who attended a Toronto vocational school with Minassian described him as withdrawn and a bit awkward.
The suspect lived with his father in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, and attended Seneca College, according to his LinkedIn social media profile.
Minassian kept mostly to himself at school, and seemed to constantly rub his head or hands -- a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), classmates told local media.
Ari Blaff, one of the students, told public broadcaster CBC that Minassian's behavior "was usually quite strange." But he'd "never noticed anything violent" -the suspect just "made people feel uneasy around him."