Multiple Injuries and Fatalities on Yonge St., Toronto after van drives on sidewalk

[unsinkable]

Suspect in custody.

[wintermom]

It's very sad. Glad they have the suspect.

[unsinkable]

I've heard at least 10 dead and many more injured.

Those poor people. When I see shoes in the road after an accident, I want to throw up. To be hit so hard. :'-(

[poppy]

Any  boardies in Toronto- you are in our thoughts tonight, this very hard night.

[umsami]

https://heavy.com/news/2018/04/alek-minassian-driver-van-hit-pedestrians-toronto-canada/

 

When I saw the video of the arrest, I noticed Arabic on the window.  Is this an area of Toronto with a lot of Muslims?

[SproutMamaK]

31 minutes ago, umsami said:

When I saw the video of the arrest, I noticed Arabic on the window.  Is this an area of Toronto with a lot of Muslims?

Not particularly. This is the banking district, with shopping and high-value high-rises interspersed among the business buildings and parks. There's a fairly strong multicultural presence here, but in my experience this part of downtown generally tends more towards Indian & Asian cultural influences than Muslim. (There are large Muslim communities in some surrounding Toronto suburbs, though, including the one in which the suspect lives; Richmond Hill is firmly upper middle class suburbia.) The attack is only a mile or so away from the Jane & Finch area, however, which is the center of gang violence in the city. 

Given his social media postings, I wouldn't put it past him to try to pin this on a religious ideology just to fan some flames, though.

[rose]

14 minutes ago, SproutMamaK said:

Given his social media postings, I wouldn't put it past him to try to pin this on a religious ideology just to fan some flames, though.

Maybe. I wonder if the spin doctors will label him as mentally unsound as way of dismissing the attack as non-terror related. Canada is SO pro-immigration and we can't have terror here. It just runs completely against our national image.

[umsami]

1 hour ago, SproutMamaK said:

Not particularly. This is the banking district, with shopping and high-value high-rises interspersed among the business buildings and parks. There's a fairly strong multicultural presence here, but in my experience this part of downtown generally tends more towards Indian & Asian cultural influences than Muslim. (There are large Muslim communities in some surrounding Toronto suburbs, though, including the one in which the suspect lives; Richmond Hill is firmly upper middle class suburbia.) The attack is only a mile or so away from the Jane & Finch area, however, which is the center of gang violence in the city. 

Given his social media postings, I wouldn't put it past him to try to pin this on a religious ideology just to fan some flames, though.

Thanks.  May have been Urdu? I'm not good at telling them apart. :)

Praying for all Canadians right now.  I'll never understand how they can say this isn't terrorism.  Driving a vehicle purposely into a crowd is terrorism.  No question in my book.  Or does Canada have the weird requirement (like the US) that an international terror group must be involved?  

[rose]

Here's a good article: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/04/23/toronto-van-tragedy-bonds-city-in-blood-but-no-one-will-say-the-word-terrorism.html

[Roadrunner]

His last name is Armenian. They tend to be Christian, not Muslim. Is this ISIS related? Is he an immigrant or Canadian born? I am not seeing much yet.

[Kate in Arabia]

5 hours ago, umsami said:

Thanks.  May have been Urdu? I'm not good at telling them apart. :)

 

 

FYI in the article that's linked above there's a picture of the van in front of shop windows with some ads; the one with Arabic script is Farsi and says "Tehran exchange" .. like a money/currency exchange...

[Melissa in Australia]

8 hours ago, rose said:

Maybe. I wonder if the spin doctors will label him as mentally unsound as way of dismissing the attack as non-terror related. Canada is SO pro-immigration and we can't have terror here. It just runs completely against our national image.

every time there is someone in Australia who does the awful drive a car into a crowd thing the media instantly starts saying how they are a drug addict with mental health problems. Apparently Australia never has a terrorist attack. It doesn't matter what nationality they are or what they shout out while they drive the car into a crowd. they are just drug addicts- no glory in that- it doesn't seem to stop the incidents happening though

 

I mean no glory for the person who wanted to become famous as a terrorist- or whatever they were seeking. I do not mean there is glory in the heinous thing they are doing

[Innisfree]

People who commit vile acts in the name of terrorist groups/ideologies and people who have mental health problems are not mutually exclusive groups. I would argue that, on a Venn diagram, there would be significant overlap.

 

[Bluegoat]

8 hours ago, umsami said:

Thanks.  May have been Urdu? I'm not good at telling them apart. :)

Praying for all Canadians right now.  I'll never understand how they can say this isn't terrorism.  Driving a vehicle purposely into a crowd is terrorism.  No question in my book.  Or does Canada have the weird requirement (like the US) that an international terror group must be involved?  

 

No, there is no requirement like that.  IT's the standard definition really, it's acts against the population in order to influence political action.

Where this kind of incident against civilians can sometimes fail to meet the definition is the political element.  If the guy thought God told him to do it, or he was just deranged, or wanted to kill a bunch of people, or get famous, or he was trying to get revenge, it wouldn't be terrorism because there is no attempt to assert political pressure on the state.  

 

[Innisfree]

I  haven't seen his social media posts, but BBC's article seems to make it clear that his neurological and/or mental health issues are real.

Quoting:

Minassian had previously attended a school for students with special needs in north Toronto, former classmates said.

He would be seen walking around Thornlea Secondary School with his head down and hands clasped tightly together making meowing noises, Shereen Chami told Reuters.

But she said Minassian had not been violent.

"He wasn't a social person, but from what I remember he was absolutely harmless," she told Reuters.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43875321

Me again:

As the parent of a student with autism, which I am not suggesting he has, I'll also point out that anyone with mental challenges or reduced social competency is extra vulnerable to social pressures they may not fully understand. For example, assessing another person's motives may not be something they are equipped to do. There may also be other areas where they have issues. Compare, for example, the shooter in Tennessee, who was clearly delusional in the past.

[Bluegoat]

42 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

People who commit vile acts in the name of terrorist groups/ideologies and people who have mental health problems are not mutually exclusive groups. I would argue that, on a Venn diagram, there would be significant overlap.

 

 

I think this is true.  To some extent tis is where I' tend to look at connections of some kind to an organization o see how I would think of it.  If a really ill person largely manufactured his association in his own mind, I'd not look at it so much as terrorism - more a manifestation of paranoia or something similar.  If the person had a more direct connection to a group with a terrorist approach, I'd tend to see the incident as a real attempt to assert political influence.

It becomes a bit confusing when you have terrorists putting blogs on the internet just to influence vulnerable individuals, who they might know nothing about.  But when that works, there is still a sense in which it isn't part of an organized attack with a clear goal, and that would affect how authorities would need to deal with it.

[SKL]

I agree that terrorist organizations use people with mental illnesses and also very immature people, because they can be easy to lead.

Words aside, I assume the authorities are working hard to find out whether anyone else was involved and how to reduce the risk of this happening again.

[Roadrunner]

All I see is if it’s a Muslim with or without mental illness, he is a terrorist. Everybody else is just mentally ill. 

[Bluegoat]

8 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

All I see is if it’s a Muslim with or without mental illness, he is a terrorist. Everybody else is just mentally ill. 

 

I don't know.  What other terrorist movements are big at the moment?

The IRA have settled down, but those were largely white guys.  I suspect that when there was a lot of that trouble going on, a mentally ill person who'd got involved with it might have been seen by many as part of their terrorism.  Or the Basques.

What has changed though is the definition of terrorism has been widened somewhat, mainly to be advantageous for the state.  The state manipulates that for it's own benefit.  So in that sense, you do get people who are no terrorists strictly speaking being called that - for example insurgents targeting military targets.  It's useful to call them terrorists because if they are insurgents it has all kinds of other implications in terms of what you need to do with them.

This seems to be somewhat new - not that it never happened before, but it became a really big thing with 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, keeping people in prison without trial, and so on. The terrorist label became something that was used to justify all kinds of things.  And being able to label people as fits your prejudices is part of that.

[Roadrunner]

I know all that, but I can’t help my sarcasm. When it’s a Muslim atrocity the frenzy on news networks is insane, flag colors over the Facebook posts, flowers, everybody stands with everybody. Go look at Fox News front page today. Zero frenzy and zero Canadian themed avatars on Facebook for those victims. 

I am just so over it all, the violence, the response....

[Bluegoat]

26 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

I know all that, but I can’t help my sarcasm. When it’s a Muslim atrocity the frenzy on news networks is insane, flag colors over the Facebook posts, flowers, everybody stands with everybody. Go look at Fox News front page today. Zero frenzy and zero Canadian themed avatars on Facebook for those victims. 

I am just so over it all, the violence, the response....

 

Well, yes, I take your point. I don't know that Fox usually says much about Canadian stuff though. There was that guy who tried to kill a bunch of MPs in the Parliament buildings a while ago, and he seemed to think he was some sort of Islamic fighter, but mostly people here thought he was an unfortunate nutter who git into the wrong websites.

[Roadrunner]

Another thing that’s amazing in this story is the conduct of Canadian police officers. They didn’t shoot. They had a madman on their hands, screaming that he had a gun in his pocket, yet they were able to take him into custody and preserve his life. I will stop at drawing parallels here. I just hope we learn from our neighbors. 

[Bluegoat]

Oh, that's weird.

Though perhaps unsurprising when you think about it.