10 killed in Toronto as driver ploughs van into sidewalk crowd

TORONTO: A driver deliberately ploughed his white Ryder rental van into a lunch-hour crowd in Toronto on Monday, killing 10 people and injuring 15 along a roughly mile-long stretch of sidewalk thronged with pedestrians, police said.

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 Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, who he said had not previously been known to the authorities. Police, who quickly arrested Minassian, did not know his motives.

"The actions definitely looked deliberate," Saunders told a late-night news conference close to the site of the incident, noting the van had been driven along sidewalks. The brutal incident - which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a "tragic and senseless attack" - was one of the most violent in the recent Canadian history. The attack shook the usually peaceful streets of Toronto, a major tourist destination. Downtown Toronto's iconic CN Tower, which is normally lit up in the evening, went dark on Monday evening.

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. A 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.”

On Tuesday, Minassian was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, as police probed what motivated his rampage. The suspect, Alek Minassian, 25, was also charged with 13 counts of attempted murder for the incident. Minassian kept his shaved head down during a brief court appearance in Canada’s largest city, speaking quietly with a defense lawyer and stated his name in a steady voice when asked to do so.

The Canadian media cited one possible clue to his motive: a Facebook post by Miniassian shortly before the incident that referenced an "incel rebellion," a shorthand used in some online message boards for "involuntary celibacy. "

The Toronto Globe and Mail reported the post, citing a spokeswoman for the socialmedia company. The post also voiced admiration for a man who killed six college students before taking his own life in California in 2014. A Facebook spokeswoman and law enforcement officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Minassian had briefly served in Canada's armed forces in late 2017 but asked to be voluntarily released after 16 days of training, defense ministry spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said. He had previously attended a high school program where one classmate remembered him as "absolutely harmless. "The suspect´s two-story red-brick home in a suburb north of Toronto was a crime scene Tuesday, taped off and surrounded by police vehicles. Officers went in and out of the house.

Details about the dead began to emerge on Tuesday, with a South Korean foreign ministry representative saying that two of that country´s citizens were killed and one injured in the attack. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp identified one of the victims as Anne Marie D´Amico, an employee of as set manager Invesco Canada.