Toronto driver charged with 10 1st-degree murder counts
TORONTO — The 25year-old suspect who is accused of plowing a van into a crowded Toronto sidewalk was ordered held Tuesday on 10 counts of murder and 13 of attempted murderasCanadianauthorities and the public sought to make sense of one of the deadliest mass killings in the country’s modern history.
Alek Minassian showed little emotion as he made a brief appearance in a Toronto courtroom in a white jumpsuit and handcuffs. The judge ordered him detained without bond and scheduled the next hearing for May 10.
His father, Vahe Minassian, cried and looked stunned inside the courtroom. Asked outside if he had any message for the families of the victims, he said quietly: “I’m sorry.”
Police, meanwhile, continued to gather evidence. About 20 officers made their way down the van’s deadly path on Yonge Street, which remained closed to traffic Tuesday and taped off with yellow crime scene tape. Nearby, mourners had put together a makeshift memorial to the victims.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed the possibility of terrorism, saying authorities saw no national security element in the case.
The incident “hasn’t changed the overall threat level in Canada,” he told a news conference, though it occurred as Cabinet ministers from the G7 nations were meeting in Toronto.
Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive, though “the incident definitely looked deliberate,” Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters at a late-night news conference Monday.
Saunders said Minassian, who lives in the Toronto Ozra Kenari cries as she places flowers on a memorial for victims along a Toronto street on Tuesday. suburb of Richmond Hill with his family, had not been known to police previously.
Authorities released few details in the case, saying the investigation was still underway, with witnesses being interviewed and surveillance video being examined.
According to a LinkedIn profile, Minassian attended Seneca College in the Toronto area. Another student, Joseph Pham, told The Toronto Star that Minassian was in a computer programming class with him last week.
Pham described Minassian as a “socially awkward” student who kept to himself: “He didn’t really talk to anyone.”
Before college, Minassian attended Thornlea Secondary School in Richmond Hill, graduating in 2011. A Thornlea classmate, Ari Blaff, told CBC News he recalls Minassian was “sort of in the background,” not the center of any particular group of friends.
“He wasn’t overly social,” Blaff told the news broadcaster.
Minassian posted a Facebook message just minutes before driving into the crowd, authorities said Tuesday, that raised the possibility he may have nursed grudges against women.
Toronto Police Services Det. Sgt. Graham Gibson told a news conference those killed and injured were “predominantly” women, though he said investigators have not yet determined whether they were targeted for that reason and declined to discuss a possible motive.
The gender issue arose because of what police called a “cryptic” Facebook message posted by Minassian just before the incident that suggested he was part of an online community angry over their inability to form relationships with women.
The now-deleted post saluted Elliot Rodger, a community college student who killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks near the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2014.
Calling Rodger “the Supreme Gentleman,” the Facebook post declared: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!”
Rodger had used the term “incel” — for involuntarily celibate — in online posts raging at women for rejecting him romantically. Like-minded people in internet forums use “Chad” and “Stacy” as dismissive slang for men and women with more robust sex lives.