Toronto van attack suspect charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, motive a mystery
Driver killed 10, wounded 15 by plowing van onto crowded sidewalk
TORONTO (Reuters) – A driver deliberately drove his white Ryder rental van into a lunch-hour crowd in Toronto on Monday, killing 10 people and wounded 15 along a roughly 1.6-km. stretch of sidewalk thronged with pedestrians.
Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, who he said had not previously been known to authorities. Police, who quickly arrested Minassian, do not know his motives.
Minassian entered the courtroom on Tuesday morning. His head was shaved and he was looking down as prosecutors announced they were charging him with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.
The proceedings began after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the attack outside of Parliament in Ottawa.
“All Canadians stand united with Toronto today,” Trudeau said. “We cannot as Canadians choose to live in fear every single day as we go about our daily business. We need to focus on doing what we can and we must to keep Canadians safe while we stay true to the freedoms and values that we all as Canadians hold dear.”
The prime minister said that, while it would take time before the motives of the attacker were understood, the incident had not changed the country’s threat level or security preparations for a G7 summit in Quebec in June.
Although the attack had the hallmarks of recent deadly vehicle assaults by Islamic State supporters in the United States and Europe, federal officials said it did not represent a larger threat to national security.
The attack shook the usually peaceful streets of Toronto, a major tourist destination. The city, which has a population of 2.8 million, recorded 61 murders last year.
“This kind of tragic incident is not representative of how we live and who we are,” Mayor John Tory told reporters. Downtown Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, which is normally lit up in the evening, went dark on Monday evening.
Canadians mourned as the victims began to be identified on Tuesday.
People left flowers at a makeshift memorial, which grew as commuters returned to work on Tuesday morning. Blank white posters left against a stone wall were covered with messages.
The Canadian flag was lowered to half-staff at Parliament and at Toronto City Hall.
Minassian attended a high school program where one classmate remembered him as “absolutely harmless.”
The officer who apprehended Minassian was praised for making a peaceful arrest even as the suspect shouted “Kill me” and claimed to have a gun. THE DRAMA started just before 1:30 p.m. when the driver steered his vehicle into the crowds.
A man who gave his name as Ali told CNN he saw the van and that the driver appeared to have been targeting people.
“This person was intentionally doing this, he was killing everybody,” the man said. “He kept going, he kept going. People were getting hit, one after another.”
The street was soon covered in blood, empty shoes and bodies.
Video footage shot by a bystander showed police arresting a suspect at the scene as he shouted: “Kill me” and pointed an unidentified object at a policeman.
The officer replied, “No, get down.”
When the suspect said, “I have a gun in my pocket,” the officer responded: “I don’t care. Get down.”
The tragedy struck as Canada was still recovering from the shock of a highway crash in Saskatchewan earlier this month that killed 16 people on a bus carrying a junior hockey team.
Last October eight people died in New York when a man driving a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path.
Islamic State encourages its supporters to use vehicles for attacks.
Last month, a former Canadian university student pleaded guilty to killing six men praying in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.
In September, a Somali refugee was charged with attempted murder over allegations he ran down four pedestrians with a car and stabbed a police officer outside a sports stadium in Edmonton, Alberta.
In a statement, the White House press secretary said Washington “pledges to provide any support Canada may need.”
Monday’s incident occurred about 30 km. from the site where Toronto is hosting a meeting of Group of Seven foreign ministers from Canada, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, but had no noticeable effect on that event’s security.