A driver deliberately plowed 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 (1.6-km) stretch of sidewalk thronged with pedestrians, Reuters reported.
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.
Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, who he said had not previously been known to authorities. Police, who quickly arrested Minassian, do not know his motives.
“The actions definitely looked deliberate,” Saunders said, noting the van had been driven along sidewalks. The brutal incident, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “tragic and senseless attack,” was one of the most violent in recent Canadian history.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said: “There would appear to be no national security connections.”
The attack shook the usually peaceful streets of Toronto, a major tourist destination. The city, which has a population of 2.8 million, recorded 61 murders last year.
“This kind of tragic incident is not representative of how we live and who we are,” Toronto Mayor John Tory told reporters. Downtown Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, which is normally lit up in the evening, went dark on Monday evening, Reuters added.
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. He kept going, he kept going. People were getting hit, one after another,” the man said.
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. When the suspect said, “I have a gun in my pocket,” the officer responded: “I don’t care. Get down.”
The tragedy struck as Canada was still recovering from the shock of a highway crash in Saskatchewan earlier this month that killed 16 people on a bus carrying a junior hockey team, Reuters noted.
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