General Toronto Van Killer - surreal interview/confession detailing actions and incel culture

The first 9-1-1 call reporting pedestrians being hit was received at 1:25 p.m. Eastern time.[8][9] At Finch Avenue, a white Chevrolet Express van, rented from Ryder, ran a red light, then drove southbound on the west-side sidewalk of Yonge Street, striking multiple pedestrians.[9][10] The van continued along the sidewalk for several more blocks striking additional pedestrians.[11][12] Security camera video from a local business shows the van reaching Tolman Street, which is one block south of Finch Avenue, at 1:24 p.m. A witness said the driver looked the victims directly in the eye during the attack and acted as if he was "playing a video game, trying to kill as many people as possible".[13] At one point, the van re-entered the roadway due to the narrowness of the sidewalk, but at Park Home Avenue, the van drove onto the sidewalk once again hitting pedestrians along the sidewalk in front of Mel Lastman Square, a civic plaza on the west side of Yonge Street, 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) south of Finch Avenue (16 blocks).[14]

Paramedics were dispatched immediately to the site and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was activated as an emergency centre. Nine people died at the scene and sixteen were injured. At 8:15 p.m., the Toronto Police Service (TPS) announced that a tenth person had died. Sunnybrook treated ten victims. The hospital reported that two persons arrived without vital signs and were pronounced dead on arrival, five were in critical condition, two serious and one in fair condition.[15]


Mel Lastman Square in June 2015
A single police officer in traffic control capacity,[16] TPS constable Ken Lam, intercepted the damaged van, which was stopped on the north sidewalk on Poyntz Avenue, just west of Yonge Street and two blocks south of Sheppard Avenue, about 2.3 kilometres (1.4 mi) south of where the attack began. Lam stopped his cruiser near the van and confronted the suspected driver, later identified as Alek Minassian, standing near the opened driver-side door.[11][17]

During the confrontation, Minassian repeatedly drew his hand from his back pocket and pointed a dark-coloured object toward the police officer as if it were a pistol.[17][18][19] Lam ordered Minassian to drop to the ground, while Minassian tried repeatedly to provoke the officer to kill him, demanding he be shot "in the head!" when the officer warned him he may be shot. Lam then went to his cruiser and turned off its siren. As Minassian and Lam advanced towards each other, the officer recognized that the object in Minassian's hand was not a gun, holstered his pistol, and took out his baton to avoid the use of unnecessary lethal force. Minassian then dropped the object from his hand, lay down on the ground and surrendered to Lam. He was arrested at 1:32 p.m.[20]

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Police identified the suspect as 25-year-old Alek Minassian, who had no prior criminal history.[22][23] According to his LinkedIn profile, he was a student at Seneca College in North York from 2011 to 2018 and lives in Richmond Hill. Minassian had attended Sixteenth Avenue Public School, an elementary school in Richmond Hill, in a special education class.[24][25] He was a software and mobile app developer.[25] His former classmates at Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill described him as "not overly social" and "harmless".[20][26] Minassian attended a special needs class for students within the autism spectrum while at Thornlea Secondary School;[27] Minassian's mother is quoted as saying in a 2009 article that her son has Asperger syndrome.[28]

In late 2017, Minassian enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces for two months, before requesting voluntary release after 16 days of recruit training.[29] A senior military official said that Minassian "wasn't adapting to military life, including in matters of dress, deportment and group interactions in a military setting" and "there were no red flags and nothing that would point to anything like this."[30]

Following the attack, a Facebook post made by Minassian was uncovered in which he identified himself as an incel ("involuntary celibate").[20][31] The state of involuntary celibacy refers to being unable to find sexual partners[32] and its subculture consists of primarily male online communities.[33] The post, dated to shortly before the beginning of the attack on April 23, read:

Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger![7][34]

"Chad" and "Stacy" are nicknames used on incel-related forums and on the /r/incels subreddit (banned since November 7, 2017) on Reddit to refer to popular, attractive, sexually active men and women, respectively; a subreddit is an individual community on Reddit based on a topic of interest.[35][36] The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising" or "Beta Male Uprising", which refers to a violent response to sexlessness, which incels view as sexual deprivation.[37] Elliot Rodger was the mass murderer behind the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California.[38][39] Rodger intended to target attractive women and sexually successful men, which led to him being posthumously idolized by some people on misogynistic online fringe communities, including several incel websites.[40] Facebook verified the account as Minassian's.[20][39] A source in the Department of National Defence told media that C23249161 was Minassian's military identification number during his army training.[41]

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