A driver plowed a car into a crowd at a street festival celebrating Filipino heritage in Vancouver on Saturday night, killing at least nine people and injuring others.
Some of those attending the festival helped arrest the suspect at the scene, who police identified as a 30-year-old man.
…
“It’s something you don’t expect to see in your lifetime,” Kris Pangilinan, a Toronto-based journalist, told Canadian public broadcaster CBC. “[The driver] just slammed the pedal down and rammed into hundreds of people. It was like seeing a bowling ball hit — all the bowling pins and all the pins flying up in the air.”
He continued, “It was like a war zone… There were bodies all over the ground.”
No motive has been given, although police have said they are “confident” it was not an act of terrorism.
I wonder what makes them confident of that. It certainly resembles a terrorist attack.
It means they double checked and the driver was definitely white
He wasn’t. I’m not going to post his name or race here, but he has been charged and his name made public.
I’ve seen the name now and you are right, Sorry, I’ve been superficial
Looks Filipino to me.
This is the kind of uninformed bile that bots and provocateurs use, might want to rethink that readyfireaim joke.
Dude might have been drunk. If it isn’t intentional, it’s usually a case of too drunk or too old.
Or plain old mental illness
Severe, severe mental illness. He wasn’t drunk or old.
What was the mental illness?
They haven’t released his diagnosis but he had been struggling with paranoia and delusions prior. Also a long history of mental health/police contact and very recent calls from his family to hospital to get him help. This was entirely preventable if the mental health supports were adequately available.
What are you talking about, the victims weren’t white?
/s
There’s a very specific rubric for what counts as a terrorist attack in Canada. Probably the level of calculation and premeditation involved was a factor and that he’s not a part of an ideologically organized group that is trying to influence behaviour of a government or political body.
A spontaneous hate crime made against a population is technically not a terrorist attack by Canadian definition. To count you have to have done it for a narrow slice of very specific reasons.
I know it’s a slim chance and I’m going out on a limb here, but something tells me the driver was a white conservative.
I prefer to call them “Poilievre voters”
That’s quite racist of you. Great job.
Why are you defending these people? You must be a white conservative yourself, who hates Canada and says Trump to invade.
I don’t believe in pushing any stereotypes in aggregate. Just as I wouldn’t say he was a Chinese Commie who can’t drive.
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Video shows the person looks Asian. Probably conservative. I’d imagine a lot of Filipinos voted for Trump too.
EDIT: Filipinos. Not Filipino Canadians.
Going out on a limb that most of the Filipinos in that crowd didn’t vote for Trump, being that it happened in Canada
Filipinos, not Filipino Canadians.
I’d imagine a lot of Filipinos voted for Trump too.
Doubtful in Vancouver.
I mean, they’re still probably right that a lot of Filipinos probably voted for Trump still. Just not many in that crowd probably. And very unlikely to be “most”
Seems like people already believe Canada is a US state. I dunno if I should laugh at the stupidity or cry that stupidity is winning
You misunderstand. And you’re not a very nice person. What I’m suggesting is that Filipinos have the same beliefs across the border. ChatGPT doesn’t seem to believe that’s the case tho.
No motive has been given, although police have said they are “confident” it was not an act of terrorism.
Let me guess? The suspect is white! I jest, but at this point it’s probably likely the driver is a radicalized “conservative” than any other group.
No. East Asian looking male with a history of mental illness.
Most likely the political component of this tragedy is how the Socreds closed regional mental health institutions in the late 20th C, and subsequent governments just swept the whole thing under the rug while homelessness spread through the province and mentally disturbed and unsupported people lashed out in random ways.
Now you have dorks and bootlickers like Mayor Sims turning a health system failure into an opportunity for cruelty and repression. Punishment will be the talking point. They will roll with that, watch.
“car plows”
So we only call it a murder or a terrorist attack if guns are involved?
We are brainwashed and numb to car violence. Super sad that nothing is done to stop this from happening.
Cars need to go. Away forever.
Cars need to go, streets need to pedestrianize, and bollards need to go up to make sure cars stay the hell out.
To your point, imagine if this were a mass-shooting and the title were: “Nine people killed after gun shoots into crowd at Vancouver Filipino Festival”. “Nine people killed after knife stabs into crowd at Vancouver Filipino Festival.” It’s so fucking passive as to be sickening. It reminds me of the “Man dies in officer-involved shooting” trope we see in US media because extrajudicial murder by the police is so routine and heavily whitewashed.
The AP gives it the same treatment. The only equivalent I could think of is “Nine people killed after bomb explodes into crowd”, and you know why that might be written that way? Because it’s not immediately obvious who placed the bomb. This mass-murdering psychopath is in custody; we can say “Nine people killed after man drives into crowd at Vancouver Filipino festival.”
Edit: the death toll is now eleven, not nine.
While I agree that it skews the narrative, it’s likely that media at early stages of the story use passive language like that to leave open the possibility of various causes, such as mechanical malfunction or even an algorithmic failure.
It’s not nessisarily skewing the narrative, it’s just not providing context. Terrorist acts have a narrow definition in Canadian law. This guy could be a spree killer motivated by racism but unless that killing is for premeditated ideological, religious or political reasons to coerce a specific result or change of policy from the population / Government it doesn’t fall under the definition.
No manifesto or claim of reasoning or connections found to groups that claim responsibility - no terrorist designation.
This is true, though the declaration being avoided is a wider set than just terrorism.
When I say skew I am not implying intent to mislead, just that paranoid interpretations by readers are kind of inevitable in such a situation.
A terrorist attack has a narrow definition in Canadian law where it is specifically part of a premeditated ideological, religious or political attempt to influence government policy or to intimidate a section of the public to a specific end. Basically if this guy didn’t have a manifesto or ever stated his reason within this rubric and was not part of a group that has specific aims then it follows under a regular old spree killer homicide unless it was racially motivated in which case it is also a hate crime.
Whether one uses cars or guns is not a factor in determining what counts as a terrorist act. The reporting on this has not been great ar clearing up this point.
Are you in the regular habit of bringing up your political agenda at funerals and vigils?
Where’s the funeral?
This is absolutely terrible.
Maybe it’s time to revisit our car-centric lifestyle.
Your not wrong but this isn’t why.
Do you normally bring up your political agenda at funerals and vigils?
ITT: hillbilly gun-clutchers who don’t realize cars are only working when you don’t hit something, and guns are only working when you do hit something.
ITT: people who don’t realize that none of us are supporting guns. We’re drawing a comparison between the same ridiculous-ass logic that right-wingers apply to guns to try to stall and misdirect from concrete regulation and the exact same rhetoric people in this thread are making in defense of car culture and lack of regulation and safeguards around cars. Strict gun regulation is good; strict car regulation is good. Strict gun regulation would deter many mass-shootings in the US. Strict car regulation (including even basic considerations for pedestrian safety at the slight expense of cars) would deter car-ramming attacks.
“Why are you talking about
gunscars at a time like this? I can’t believe you’re using this tragicmass-shootingmass-ramming to soapbox aboutguncar regulation. This isn’t the time to talk about how we letgunscars be so dangerous and how the direct result was thisshootingramming. The real cause of this was a mental health crisis. Society needsgunscars toprotect ourselvesget around. What do you mean, ‘Do I ever bring up this mental health crisis outside ofmass-shootingsmass-rammings?’ Uhh…”
