Ten people were killed and at least 15 others wounded in yesterday’s van attack in Toronto, multiple media outlets are reporting.
According to the Toronto Star, the attack took place over an approximately 1.4 mile stretch of Yonge Street, between Finch Avenue and Sheppard Avenue, when a man allegedly jumped the sidewalk with a rented van and began ramming into pedestrians. The suspect later ditched the van and was captured after a standoff with the police, in which he asked a police officer to shoot him in the head. He was due to appear in court this morning at 10 a.m. local time.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale told CBC.ca that they day’s events do not represent a larger threat to national security. Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders declined to speculate on a motive for the attack, but said that the driver’s actions “definitely looked deliberate.”
“We are looking very strongly to what the exact motivation was for this particular incident to take place,” Saunders told CBC.ca. “At the end of the day, we will have a fulsome answer, and we will have a fulsome account as to what the conclusion of this is.”
While the investigation into the attacker’s motivation is ongoing, the incident is similar to a number of terrorist attacks involving vehicles that have taken place over the past few years. These include an attack that killed at least 12 people at a Christmas market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, in which ISIS claimed involvement, as well as similar attacks in London and Barcelona.
At the same time, other similar incidents have been found to have no connection to terrorism. An incident earlier this month in Muenster, Germany, in which a man drove into a crowd of people outside a popular bar in the city’s old town, police said that there was no indication of any political motivation for the attack. The driver had a record of psychological problems and a history of run-ins with the law, including charges of fraud, malicious property damage and hit-and-run, all of which were later dismissed. A search of one of the driver’s four apartments also found an 18-page that indicated suicidal intentions.
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