Politic?

Vehicular Terrorism

"Here you have a major thoroughfare in a major city and people are going about their lives and a van driving down the street just goes up the curb and starts cruising down the sidewalk."
"That's what makes it so exceptionally scary. This is almost a new form of violence that takes place in our 9-to-5 lives."
"Mental illness is a minor source of this kind of thing."
"What if [the driver] has some generalized hate? Who knows here, honestly."
"Who would have dreamed that would happen on Yonge Street, in broad daylight? No city is immune, no time is immune and no place is immune."
"And so just be alert ... be on your watch. If you see a vehicle that is very erratic, focus on it, pay attention to it. Eternal vigilance, in a sense."
Frank Farley, Canadian professor, psychological studies and education, Temple University, Philadelphia

"The moment he hit a fire hydrant, I knew. Right away, he hit someone, [and] he just kept on going."
"He hit a pedestrian who was crossing the road. He flew in the air."
"He went back onto the sidewalk. He was zigzagging, hitting people, bodies being lifted, there was blood bursting from them. It was horrible."
Henry Yang, driver-witness, Toronto vehicular homicide attack

"It doesn't matter why the guy did it. We won't let this divide us."
"The community will pull together."
Arias Reisiardekani, Yonge Street resident

RCMP, OPP and Toronto police officers, some with assault rifles, secure Yonge St. at Upper Madison, after police say a white van mounted the curb and struck pedestrians walking along the sidewalk. (Rene Johnston / Toronto Star)

Good advice from Dr. Farley. On the other hand, the potential threat of an unhinged driver intent on striking and killing people with all the power of a mechanical monster driven for that purpose cannot monopolize people's minds. And nor can they always be aware to the potential of such carnage taking place on ordinary streets in a city housing a UN's-worth of people originating from all over the globe taking up residence in Canada's largest city, a melting pot of ethnicities, heritage, culture and religions.

It is, in any event, futile for no one can be on guard constantly. And such a fugitive event occurring is an anomaly. Mostly undertaken at the behest of Islamist terrorism by the faithful in Islam committing themselves to jihad and the prospect of martyrdom requiring they take along as many non-Muslim sacrifices to Islamist martyrdom-ritual as possible, to gain entry to Paradise as an honoured warrior deserving of the sensuous pleasures available to him there.

A police officer stands over a covered body in Toronto after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into a number of pedestrians on Monday, April 23, 2018. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)

On this occasion, when 25-year-old Alek Minassian, a student at a community college living in Richmond Hill just north of Toronto, rented a van with the distinct purpose of using it as a battering ram to take the lives of unsuspecting, innocent passersby, it seems his inner demons may have led him to commit this gruesome assault, and not the conviction of jihadist righteousness. Clearly, he wanted to die, and sought to do so by this medium, imploring an arresting officer to shoot him dead.

He was obviously suicidal but lacked the conviction to dispose of himself, preferring to kill ten human beings and seriously injure another fourteen people, before surrendering himself to the goal of achieving suicide by police-arrest. A wretchedly cowardly act, targeting the innocent to grease the wheels of fate to achieve his own death. Toronto police coping with too-frequent events of emotionally disturbed people committing public crimes, might have hoped they would never encounter one this desperately horrible.

The man's rage against life and his singular existence leading him to mow through a bus shelter, into fire hydrants and a mailbox in his search for warm human bodies to destroy. "From my balcony I could see five or six people on the ground. There was a body at this corner, and another one. And there was like four bodies in Mel Lastman Square. Three of them are still there right now and one of them was put in an ambulance", recounted area resident Andy Jibb.

"I just heard screaming and I ran out to my balcony and I saw this van, still heading south on the sidewalk. I heard something being hit. I could see the van heading down south, and it was like he had the brakes on. I could hear the tires squealing. It was like brake-torque, like he was pumping on the brakes and the gas at the same time."

The dead were between the ages of 22 and 80, mostly women. There seem to be some hints that this man was sexually frustrated, that his sterile relations with women were a source of aggrieved resentment to him. In interviews with some of his academic peers this friendless man was identified as peculiar in character, reserved and remote, unwilling to look others in the eye. Perhaps another Marc Lepine of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre; yet another murderous misogynist.