Police: Suspect targeted women
TORONTO — The suspect in the deadly van attack in Toronto posted a chilling Facebook message just minutes before plowing into a crowded city sidewalk, authorities said Tuesday, raising the possibility that he may have nursed grudges against women — a possible echo of a 1989 massacre of 14 women that remains one of Canada’s most traumatic acts of violence.
The 25-year-old suspect, Alek Minassian, was charged Tuesday with first degree murder in the deaths of 10 pedestrians he mowed down in the rented van he sent careening along the busy walkway. Fourteen others were injured.
Toronto Police Services Detective Sgt. Graham Gibson told a news conference that those killed and injured were “predominantly” women, though he declined to discuss a possible motive.
“All the lanes are open with this investigation,” said police Chief Mark Saunders.
Authorities have not yet released a list of victims. Those known to have been killed include a 30-year-old woman from Toronto, Anne Marie D’Amico, who was active in volunteer work, as well as a female student at Seneca College, which Minassian also attended. A Jordanian citizen and two South Koreans were also among those killed.
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, 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 sometimes use “Chad” and “Stacy” as dismissive slang for men and women with more robust sex lives.
The anti-women sentiment recalled the 1989 massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering college in Montreal, when 25-year-old Marc Lepine entered a classroom, separated the men from the women, told the men to leave and opened fire, killing 14 women before killing himself. In a suicide note, he blamed feminists for ruining his life.
Since then, there have been sporadic mass shootings in Canada, but none with a higher death toll.
“Canadians know who they are not — they’re not Americans,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. “They perceive that Canada, relative to the U.S., is a peaceable kingdom.”
Police say Monday’s rampage does not appear linked to international terrorism. Since 2014, there have been at least two terror-related cases in Canada of vehicles being used as weapons. In 2014 a Muslim-Canadian gunman killed a member of the honor guard at Ottawa’s national war memorial, then stormed Parliament, where he was shot dead by a sergeant-at arms. Last year, a French-Canadian man shot dead six Muslim men during evening prayers at a mosque in Quebec City.