Toronto Van Attack: 10 Dead, 15 Injured, Suspect Identified
Local Editor
Nine people were killed and 16 more injured after a white van struck a number of pedestrians in Canada's Toronto, police said.
The incident on Yonge Street and Finch Avenue East occurred just after 1 pm local time. The Toronto Police Department said that ten people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured.
Meanwhile, Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital said five of the injured are in a critical condition and another two are in a serious condition.
The hospital said on Twitter that its emergency department is on lockdown as an "added precaution."
Soon after, police identified the perpetrator as Alek Minassian, 25, from Richmond, Ontario.
"The man behind the wheel of the van that plowed into pedestrians on Yonge Street and Finch Avenue East was identified as Alek Minassian," Toronto police chief Mark Saunders confirmed.
Saunders said that, although police are in the very early stages of their investigation, the suspect's actions "definitely looked deliberate."
He dismissed reports in the media that the perpetrator might have confronted officers with a gun before he was apprehended, saying that the arrest proceeded without incident and that "nothing indicates that he had a gun."
The investigators are still "looking very strongly at what the exact motive of this action was," Saunders said. Asked if police, in line with earlier media reports, believe the incident to be of a terrorist nature, he added: "We don't' rule out anything."
Minassian was previously unknown to law enforcement. "There is nothing on our files," Saunders confirmed.
There has been some confusion about the correct spelling of the suspect's name, spelled by some sources as Alek and others as Alex. The Toronto police have been inconsistent in this as well, the latest update suggesting the correct spelling is Alek.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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