At first, no one found suspect that the Black Audi SUV had turned around a portable barrier on a street full of Geur Festivals in Food Trucks and reviewing the goods of artisans.
It was around 8 pm on Saturday, and APL.DE.AP, an American Filipino rapper and founding member of the black -eyed peas, had finished a concert that was the exclusive event of the Lapu Lapu festival organized by the Philippine community in Vancouver, British switch.
At first, the Great SUV crawled through the crowd, and Kris Pangilinan, who sold clothes in a cabin, assumed that he had a leg watch to help another merchant to load his products and closed stores.
Then, start accelerating.
“He moved to some where the vendors are,” Pangilinan said Sunday after a night largely in insomnia. “Suddenly I listen to this escape and the sound of vehicle acceleration. So, boom: hits the digens of people.”
Shortly after, police officers were entering the tables in Mr. Pangilinan’s store to use as stretchers.
At least 11 people, who have a classification of 5 to 65, were killed in the episode, that Prime Minister Mark Carney described as a “car frame attack.” The most wounded boxes, the interim chief of the Vancouver Police Department, Steve Rai. Said Sunday, warning that some of them could die.
Several witnesses said the SUV driver tried to flee after the attack, but was restricted by people from the crowd.
End of Sunday, The authorities said the prosecutors had accused Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, of eight second-degree murder positions. More positions were anticipated.
Mr. Rai, the police chief, refused to discuss the reason for the suspect, but said the police previously had “substantive contact with him about mental health problems.” David Eby, the British Columbia Prime Minister, said the driver had acted “intentionally.”
Police have ruled out terrorism as a reason, an evaluation shared by national security officials, according to Mr. Carney. “We do not believe there is an active threat to Canadians,” he said.
Through Saturday night and until Sunday, the members of the great Filipina community of Vancouver exchanged frantically messages to determine who had lost, who Kured was and who had escaped the butcher shop.
“I don’t think my phone buzzed so much my life,” said RJ Aquino, president of the Canadian Filipino community and the BC cultural society “there was a lot of panic and relief when someone responds.”
Mable Elmore, a provincial legislator and organizer of the festival that turned his office into a refuge for people fleeing the murder, fought and sometimes failed to maintain their composure at a press conference.
“It was a beautiful day for a celebration,” he said, remembering the ideal climate he had been graceful.
Lapu Lapu Day, an annual celebration in the Philippines, commemorates Datu Lapu Lapu, an indigenous leader who faced Spanish colonization. In Vancouver, the festival became an annual event in 2023.
“We have incredible pain,” said Elmore. “The Philippine community will show true resistance, and we will join this catastrophe with the support and love of the broad community.”
The attack overturned the last day of the campaign in a Canadian election that has been dominated by the tariffs of President Trump and his vote of Annexar Canada as state 51. Mr. Carney and Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the third place New Democratic Party, greatly abandoned their schedules for Sunday. Mr. Carney still planned to go to Vancouver, but meet with the mourners instead of gathering his followers.
“Last night, families lost a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a son or a daughter,” Carney told journalists in Hamilton, Ontario. “Those families live the nightmare of each family.”
Going to the Filipino Canadians, he said: “I join all Canadians of mourning with you. I know the Canadians are united with you.”
Pierre Pailiver, the conservative rival of Mr. Carney, continued campaigning but appeared in a Filipina church in the Toronto suburbs.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. or the Philippines said in a statement on Sunday that he was “completely destroyed when he heard about the terrible incident” in Vancouver, and expressed his “deepest sympathies” to the families of the victims.
Vancouver is proud to be a diverse and multicultural city, with more than half of its residents that are identified as a “visible minority,” according to the 2021 census.
Mr. Eby, the Prime Minister of the Province, said on Sunday that the Philippines are prominent in child health and care, as well as in the labor forces of long -term households.
“We will be with them and support them as they support us,” Eby said. “It’s his turn to receive attention from us.” “
Jacob Burleros, a hip-hop artist who acted at the festival, said he was signing autographs, posing for photos and “feeling at the top of the world” when he heard the SUV tears the crowd and then the driver tried to escape.
“He leaves the car, take off and start running to the left,” Burleros said. “Three of us surround the boy, shouting.” He said that a security guard and an event organizer intervened to protect the suspect from reprisals.
This was the first mass murder that involved a vehicle in Canada since 2021, when an extreme right -wing extremist led a truck to five members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario, killing four of the theme. A judge determined that man was motivated by Supreme White Ideology and considered that murders were an act of terrorism.
In 2018, a man in Toronto used an interested party to run and kill 11 pedestrians, wounding another 15. Most of the victims were women.
In recent years, police forces in Canada have regularly blocked roads that lead to places that house large crowds with removed or overturned trucks full of gravel.
That step was not tasks on the Vancouver attack scene.
Surging the initial evaluation of the authorities that the attack was an isolated event, the police allowed a 10 -kilometer race that attracted more than 45,000 participants last year to move forward on Sunday.
The unique nature, however, did little to comfort many in the Philippine community.
“Why would we, why would damage such a beautiful community?” Mr. Pangilinan, the merchant, asked. “It is definitely something that I am going to have to live for the rest of my life. And we simply pay tribute to those affected and those who died.”
Sarah Berman Vancouver contributed reports.
