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CANADA

Toronto
Van
Driver
Kills
at
Least
10
People
in
‘Pure
Carnage’
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By IAN AUSTEN and LIAM STACK APRIL 23, 2018

TORONTO — The killing began on a busy lunchtime thoroughfare in Toronto on

Monday when a white rental Ryder van ran over a pedestrian crossing the street —
then mounted a sidewalk and began plowing into people indiscriminately.

“One by one, one by one,” said a witness who identified himself as Ali. “Holy
God, I’ve never seen such a sight before. I feel sick.”
 By the end, at least 10 people were dead and 15 were injured, said the
authorities.

The driver’s actions, they said, appeared intentional, but did not seem to have
been an act of terrorism. “The city is safe,” said the Toronto police chief, Mark
Saunders.

The driver, who was identified as Alek Minassian, 25, was in custody after
initially refusing to surrender.

“Get down or you’ll be shot,” the officers warned him after he exited the van in
a scene captured on video.

“Shoot me in the head,” Mr. Minassian said.

He was subdued without any shots being fired.

Nearby, the bodies of the dead and injured, some covered by orange tarps, lay
on a broad sidewalk that was scattered with debris, including a child’s stroller.

The carnage was reminiscent of deadly attacks by Islamic State supporters using
vehicles that have shaken up Nice, France, Berlin, Barcelona, London and New
York. But late Monday, Canada’s public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, said this
time appeared to be different.

“The events that happened on the street behind us are horrendous,” he said,
“but they do not appear to be connected in any way to national security based on
the information at this time.”

With the driver under arrest, the Canadian authorities began the process of
reconstructing how — and why — a day filled with the promise of early spring
became a scene of horror. The authorities released few details about Mr. Minassian
on Monday night.

“There were a lot of pedestrians out, a lot of witnesses out, enjoying the sunny
afternoon,” said Peter Yuen, the deputy chief of the Toronto police service.

John Flengas, the acting E.M.S. supervisor for Sunnybrook Health Sciences
Center, which said it received 10 victims from the scene, described it as “pure
carnage.” He told CTV News on Monday that he had seen “victims everywhere.”

One witness said the van had mowed down everything in its path: pedestrians,
mailboxes, electrical poles, benches and a fire hydrant. Another, who rushed to
help the pedestrian struck while crossing the street, said, “Pieces of the van went
flying everywhere.”

Meaghan Gray, a spokeswoman for the Toronto police, said the authorities
received a report at 1:30 p.m. on Monday that the van had mounted a curb near
Yonge Street and Finch Avenue West. Stephan Powell, a spokesman for the
Toronto Fire Department, said pedestrians were struck at “at least two locations.”

Ten victims were taken to the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, Dr. Dan
Cass, its executive vice president, said at a news conference. Two were declared
dead on arrival, five were in critical condition and three were in serious condition,
he said.

Dr. Cass said that he did not have information about the nature of the victims’
injuries and that the hospital had not yet confirmed the identities of the dead.

In a statement on Monday, John Tory, the mayor of Toronto, said, “My

thoughts are with those affected by this incident and the front-line responders who
are working to help those injured.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “We’re monitoring the situation closely.”

Yonge Street is Toronto’s main artery, and is widely celebrated as the longest
street in Canada. It cuts through the city from Lake Ontario through downtown
before reaching the suburbs and then into farmland.

The deaths occurred in the far north, a densely populated part of the city
surrounded by many new condominium towers. On Monday, many shops in the
area remained closed, at the request of the authorities. And a makeshift memorial
was developing at a stone wall just south of Finch Avenue.

Konstantin Goulich, a local resident, appeared with bags of markers and rolls
of cardboard from a dollar store.
 “Guys please come and write how you’re feeling: your wishes for the victims, if
you’d like to say something. Every bit of support counts,” Mr. Goulich said to
passers-by.

“If you can’t write in English, write in your own language write in Chinese,
write in Korean,” he said.

Late in the day, well south of the scene of the killings, extra security was
obvious around the Air Canada Centre in downtown Toronto, where the Toronto
Maple Leafs were playing Boston in a playoff game. Large municipal dump trucks,
apparently filled with sand and gravel, were used to block off roads, including one
major thoroughfare near the ice rink.

After the game, which Toronto won, jubilant fans streamed out of the arena,
but the only sign of the day’s events on Yonge Street were clutches of police officers
wearing bulletproof vests. Some fans expressed shock about the carnage that had
taken place earlier in the day.

“We don’t expect this in Canada,” said one fan, Luca Pitsocia, a 21-year-old
aspiring paramedic.

The van used in the rampage was stopped about a mile south of where it took
place, said Dan Fox, a civil servant who passed the vehicle on his way to work on
Monday. He said it had “significant damage.”

“It looked like the side of the van had scraped along the side of the building,”
Mr. Fox said in a phone interview, the sound of police sirens wailing behind him.
“The driver-side door was open, but I didn’t see anyone in or around the van.”

The episode in Toronto appeared to be the deadliest use of a vehicle in Canada

to deliberately mow down pedestrians.

Last October, a police officer in Edmonton was struck with a car and stabbed,
and four other people were later deliberately hit by a U-Haul truck. The driver of
both vehicles, a Somali immigrant, was arrested in what Prime Minister Trudeau
called a terrorist attack.

In 2014, a driver in the Montreal area struck two members of the Canadian
 armed forces and was shot and killed by the police, who described the attack as
Islamist terrorism. One of the victims died.

Ian Austen reported from Toronto, and Liam Stack from New York. Reporting was
contributed by Dan Bilefsky from Toronto, Catherine Porter from Calgary, Canada, and
Christine Hauser, Maya Salam, Rick Gladstone and Rukmini Callimachi from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on April 24, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the
headline: On Sidewalk, Van Cuts Down 10 in Toronto.

© 2018 The New York Times Company