Israeli soldiers have killed four Palestinian children during the protests in the occupied Gaza Strip since March 30. Every sniper shot is approved, & recorded, Israeli officials say.
Barry Mather, a delivery driver from Bolton, told Global News Radio 640 Toronto's Kelly Cutrara that he saw a "banged up" white van while he was making a delivery on Bogert Avenue, near Yonge and Sheppard.There was also a showdown with the man who was driving the van:
"I was coming out of my van and I'd look and I'd hear this scraping and grinding noise and there's this white Ryder van coming towards me so I had to jump out of the way."
Nick Sanka told Global News he was studying in an area Starbucks when he saw a truck "just running through."
"I get up, and by the time I come here, I saw someone with blood trailing..."
Sanka said the van was "definitely speeding" and that the driver appeared to be in control.
"He did seem to have control over what he was doing ... so it wasn't some sort of impairment where he was swerving," he said.
"He just [drove] straight through - and he managed to make a perfect turn at that corner as well."
A video posted to Twitter shows the suspect in front of the van pointing what appears to be a gun. A lone police officer gets out of a police car in front of the suspect and points a gun at him.
"Get down. Get down or you will be shot," the officer is heard to say.
The suspect shouts something inaudible, before moving towards the officer who continues to tell him to get down.
The man then throws down what he had been holding and gets down as the officer approaches and handcuffs him.
Videos show lone Toronto police officer arresting suspect after van hits pedestrians: 'This guy is a hero'For more pictures and tweets, see the original link.
Victor Ferreira April 23, 2018, 10:31 PM EDT
Alone and staring down a man who allegedly used a van to kill ten people, a Toronto police officer didn't flinch. Instead, he rushed toward the suspect, who claimed to have a gun, and made the arrest without firing a single shot.
"This guy is a hero," said Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association.
The officer was the first on the scene, McCormack said, and was out on patrol when he heard calls go out about the attack, which injured another 15 people.
"Your adrenaline is running," McCormack said. "You don't know what you're dealing with when he's pulling his hand out of his pocket."
Multiple videos posted to social media appear to show the harrowing scene, from the moment the suspect exits his van to the moment he is put in handcuffs. Police identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, of Richmond Hill, Ont. Minassian has not been charged with a crime and police said the incident was not connected to national security.
After pulling up beside the white rental van, the officer crouches and keeps his cruiser between him and the suspect. The suspect, leaving his van parked on the sidewalk, slowly begins to approach the officer, extending his arm while appearing to point something at him. At a press conference, Chief Mark Saunders confirmed that the suspect was not pointing
Multiple sirens can be heard blaring in the background. Help was on the way, but wouldn't arrive until the suspect was already in handcuffs.
The suspect, standing upright and wearing a black coat and black pants, appears to rapidly reach into his pocket multiple times and then point something at the officer. Unfazed, the officer demands that he "get down." The officer repeats those words another 13 times.
"Come on, get down!" he yells at the suspect.
"Kill me," the man says.
"No, get down!" the officer says.
At this point, the officer leaves the cover of his cruiser and begins to circle around the suspect, inching closer.
"I have a gun in my pocket," the suspect says.
"I don't care," the officer answers. "Get down!"
The man warns the officer again that he's carrying a gun in his pocket, but the officer replies that he doesn't care and demands that the suspect "get down."
After telling the officer to "shoot me in the head," the suspect inches toward him for the first time. The officer continues to back off, moving to his left as the suspect narrows the distance between them. Unexpectedly, the officer charges at the suspect. Apparently taken by surprise, the man backs off, raises his hands and drops the object that he was pointing in his outstretched arm.
After three more shouts of "get down," the suspect throws himself on the ground and puts his hands behind his back. As the officer begins to place the handcuffs around the man's wrists, his backup finally arrives. In another video, three officers hold the suspect over a cruiser.
After the arrest, McCormack spoke with the officer, whom he wouldn't identify. He congratulated him on the arrest, but the "humble" officer didn't care that people were heralding him as a hero on social media.
"The guy's brokenhearted about the carnage and the amount of people who died today," McCormack said.
Saunders said the arrest was "directly related to the high calibre training that takes place."
"The officers here are taught to use as little force as possible in any given situation," he said.
After similar attacks in Nice, Barcelona, London and New York, police were preparing for an incident like this, McCormack said. But in these types of tense situations, it's difficult for even the most seasoned officers to keep a cool head.
"That officer showed amazing restraint," McCormack said. "It's one thing to see this on TV. It's another to see the carnage and victims on the sidewalks of Toronto."
Eyewitnesses of the deadly ramming incident in Toronto, Canada, say the van hit every person it encountered on the city sidewalk and crashed into everything in its path before fleeing the scene.Update: Van driver identified:
"The man was walking through the intersection at Yonge and Kempford. He was in the middle of the intersection and the van just went right into him, plowed right into him," an eyewitness told RT. "Apparently he drove down further and he went into a sidewalk by the next building and he hit more people there and he just kept going."
Another man said he saw one of the victims dragged along the road, leaving a trail of blood on the asphalt. "I saw a white van with red coloring on it and all I saw was that he smashed into someone over there. He just went on the sidewalk. He just started hitting everybody. He hit every single person on the sidewalk; any person in his way. The bus stop, everything all shattered."
Witness Jamie Eopni told local news station CP24 that the white van was "completely demolished" following the incident. "It was crashing into everything. It destroyed a bench. If anybody was on that street they would have been hit on the sidewalk," Eopni said.
"You could see exactly where he drove because of the tire marks. [He was] just crashing into the poles, scraping along. It didn't really look like he cared where he was going or what he was doing."
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 has confirmed.Update: More on Alek Minassian:
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.
[...]
However, the Canadian government so far has been cautious in speaking about a possible motive behind the perpetrator's actions. Ralph Goodale, Canada's Minister of Public Safety, said earlier that the government had not issued a terrorism alert, noting that it is still too early to speculate on motives or causes.
An Alek Minassian was known to his former classmates in high school and over seven or eight years at Seneca College as a man with no known religious or political affiliations or strong views on anything, nor a penchant for violence.From Global News:
Their accounts up to a few years ago describe a man some former classmates believed could never learn how to drive, let alone carry out an attack.
At least three former classmates said he appeared to suffer from a social disability. A couple also said he seemed friendly and never had serious conflicts.
One classmate, who worked on a project with him at Seneca in 2015, described Mr. Minassian as someone with a significant social or mental disability who had a hard time speaking to people, difficulty under pressure, and constant physical tics where he shook his hands and tapped his head.
The man, who did not want to be identified, expressed disbelief that Mr. Minassian would even be capable of renting and piloting an automobile. He said, when he knew him, Mr. Minassian didn't drive, and didn't know how a steering wheel worked.
The man said in a text conversation that he did not believe the attack would be politically motivated, saying he suspects his former classmate got into an accident, overreacted and panicked, asking police to shoot him in a video captured on the street by a bystander. The man said he heard that Mr. Minassian could code well.
One Seneca student in computer studies said Mr. Minassian had graduated from the program just last week. The student shared with The Globe and Mail a message Mr. Minassian sent to the group "out of the blue" on April 19 telling off his classmates. He added that he believed Mr. Minassian was at Seneca for seven years because he held down several software development jobs.
Saying he did not want to be publicly identified as an associate of a suspected killer because he is currently being interviewed for summer internships, this Seneca student added that he didn't think Mr. Minassian had lined up any work after college.
The student said the Mr. Minassian he knew of never showed any signs of extremism or of subscribing to any particular religious or ideological persuasion - he was just a somewhat socially awkward young man who was good with computers.
A government source suggested that the suspect is not likely linked to terrorism since the RCMP integrated national security enforcement team has not been called in to investigate.
The RCMP was called in after Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was run over in Quebec by Martin Couture-Rouleau in October, 2014, because in that case the unit knew he was radicalized. They also investigated the Parliament Hill attack that took place a few days later.
The student looking for internships said the Mr. Minassian who attended his school was a whiz with working with specialized computer chips known as graphical processing units. These chips have traditionally been used to help process images, but can also have other applications where they give computers a lot more processing power.
The student said he wouldn't describe Mr. Minassian as a loner, exactly, because he would converse when necessary. But, he added, he didn't interact well.
This student said he spent much of Monday trying to tell whether his friend was the same person who surfaced in videos of the post-attack arrest. He said the portion of an eyewitness video where the suspect pointed at a police officer with an object was the man he knew. The movements fit with the man he knew, he said, although the bald head was something new.
[...]
Here's what we know about the suspected van attacker.
According to a LinkedIn social media profile, Minassian has been a student at Seneca College since 2011, studying computer software development.
In 2014, a person with the same name created an Android public parking app, available on Google Play, that allows users to search for parking locations in Toronto close to a specific address. The app was last updated in 2014, and had over 100 downloads.
Global News obtained a Facebook post Monday that Minassian wrote, just before carrying out his rampage, where he praised the "Incel Rebellion," and California mass-killer Elliot Rodger, just before carrying out the rampage.
"The Incel Rebellion has already begun!" reads the post. "We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!"
Rodger killed six people in 2014 in a vehicle and shooting rampage. Before carrying out the act, Rodger posted a video blasting the women who rejected him and the men who weren't rejected and were sexually active.
"I'll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you," he said. "I don't know why you girls are so repulsed by me."
Facebook confirmed to Global News it removed Minassian's post Monday.
"This is a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the people who have been affected," a spokesperson for the social media company said in an email. "There is absolutely no place on our platform for people who commit such horrendous acts."
Minassian spent a short time with the Canadian Armed Forces last year, but quit after completing just over two weeks of training.
"The accused in the recent incident in Toronto, was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces for two months in late 2017 - from Aug. 23 until Oct. 25," a spokesperson for the Canadian military said. "He did not complete his recruit training and requested to be voluntarily released from the CAF after 16 days of recruit training."
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters in Ottawa that Minassian had been "thoroughly screened" during the recruiting process.
"One thing I can tell you is when it comes to the selection process that the military takes, we go through a very rigorous process in terms of security," Sajjan said. "My focus is making sure the people that are going to be doing the Canadian Armed Forces have been thoroughly screened and in this case, that was done and we'll continue to do so, just like any other security agencies go through.
"In this case here, this member literally was in the military for approximately two months but was in recruit training for 16 days and voluntarily withdrew," the defence minister said.
For many years now millions of people around the world, including former members of the US and other governments, academics and professionals have known and spoken about the fact that "al-Qaeda", far from being a modern Islamic terror group was the name given to a small grouping of extremist and deluded nut-jobs that the US and British governments hired and trained to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the late 70's and early 80's. Also widely accepted is the fact that, after that particular conflict, Pakistani intelligence, in league with the CIA, continued to handle and groom these extremists and stage-manage their sporadic attacks around the world in order to conjure up the modern "Islamic terror threat".
Several mainstream media outlets and US government officials have stated that Osama bin laden was a CIA asset who was used to funnel money to these extremists and oversee the establishment of militant training camps, all under the control of Western agents.
A French intelligence report, carried by the mainstream press, stated that Osama Bin Laden met with a CIA agent in the American hospital in Dubai two months before the 9/11 attacks.
Everyone knows, (or should) that the Bush government escorted members of Bin Laden's family out of the US on September 11th 2001. We have all even been treated to a well-researched movie about the long standing ties between Bush senior and the US oil cartels and the bin laden family.
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