The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Authorities: Plot at Canadian mall foiled
Suspects planned deadly attack on Valentine’s Day.
TORONTO — Canadian police said Saturday they had foiled a plot by three people — one an American — who were planning to go to a mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and kill as many people as they could before killing themselves on Valentine’s Day.
One suspect fatally shot himself as police moved in to arrest him, and the American suspect confessed to the plot when she was arrested at the Halifax airport, a senior police official said.
Police and Canadian Justice Minister Peter MacKay said the plot was not related to terrorism.
“This appeared to be a group of murderous misfits that were ... prepared to wreak havoc and mayhem on our community,” MacKay said. “The attack does not appear to have been culturally motivated, therefore not linked to terrorism.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said friends Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath, 23, of Geneva, Ill., and Randall Steven Shepherd, 20, of Nova Scotia, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
Commanding Officer Brian Brennan of the Nova Scotia RCMP said the suspects planned to go to the Halifax Shopping Center on Saturday and kill as many people as they could before taking their own lives. Police search during a snow storm for a suspect in a foiled attack in Cole Harbour, a Halifax suburb.
He told a news conference that police found three long-barreled rifles in the home of a third suspect, a 19-year-old who died before he could be arrested. He did not say how the suspect died, but a senior police official said the 19-year-old man fatally shot himself early Fri- day after police surrounded his home in the Halifax suburb of Timberlea.
The official said Souvannarath had prepared a number of pronouncements to be tweeted after her death. Shepard was also arrested early Friday at the airport where he went to meet her, police said.
The suspects used an online chat stream and were apparently obsessed with death and had many photos of mass killings, said the official.
Police acted quickly after receiving information from the Crime Stoppers tip line. The two suspects are due in court on Tuesday.
At the home of the 19year-old, police saw two people leave the house who they determined were the man’s parents and pulled them over on a traffic check. They then called the suspect.
The man told police that he didn’t have any guns but shot himself as he was on his way out of the house, the official said.
A neighbor said the man had not mixed with others in the neighborhood in recent years.
“He was one of those people who kept to himself, not a people person,” said the neighbor, Steven Greenwood.
The official said police worked with Canadian border officials to find Souvannarath on her flight as she was making her way from Chicago.
Police in Geneva, about 35 miles west of Chicago, searched her home on Friday night and seized several items. Geneva Police Cmdr. Julie Nash refused to describe the items or their potential value as evidence, saying Canadian authorities had requested that such information not be made public.
Eva Schooley, who lived across from the Souvannaraths for about a decade, recalled them as “very nice people” and said they participated in block parties, Easter egg hunts and Halloween parties.
“My granddaughters ran around with Lindsay,” she said. “Lindsay was a little strange. I think at one point she went kind of gothic on us for a while. She liked to dress in black, the whole gothic style.”
Tensions remained high in normally calm Halifax. Police responded to reports of shots fired Saturday night at the Halifax Shopping Center, but backed off when it was determined that the source of concern was seven children playing with slingshots.