Summary: The Toronto van driver who killed almost a dozen pedestrians has been arrested.
On Monday, Alek Minassian allegedly used a van to mow down almost a dozen people in Toronto, and according to CNN, he may have done it because of his hatred for women.
CNN said that before Minassian murdered ten people, he wrote on his Facebook page “All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” Rodger infamously killed six and injured 14 in 2014 at his school, the University of California Santa Barbara, in a shooting and stabbing attack.
Rodger killed himself after he carried out his gruesome plan, and police later found his manifesto, which talked about how women refused to give him any attention.
Rodger’s father told the New York Daily News that he was “very sad” his son inspired the Toronto killer.
“It’s a difficult thing to articulate, how devastating this is. It’s not only devastating for the victims (in Toronto), it’s also devastating for Elliot’s victims, to bring this all up again and make a hero out of a very disturbed individual,” Peter Rodger told the Daily News. “This kind of copycat behavior is very sad. I don’t know what to do to try to stop this from happening again. It would be nice to find a way to stop this kind of behavior from continuing.”
Toronto police said that they were investigating Minassian’s obsession with Rodger but so far they have not cited a definite motive.
On Monday, Minassian, 25, drove a rental Ryder van into pedestrians on a busy Toronto street. He was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. For the fourteenth injured victim, the police are still considering the charge.
CNN stated that the young man was “socially awkward” and his former classmates said that he was “terrified” of women. In Minassian’s Facebook post, he said “The Incel rebellion has already begun.” Incel refers to those who are involuntarily celibate, according to New York Daily News.
“He was genuinely terrified with interacting verbally or physically at all, except for his mother,” the classmate told CNN.
US law enforcement said Minassian was known to authorities, but he was not known to Toronto police. He was arrested only minutes after a 911 call was made.
A witness, Diego DeMatos, said that the suspect’s van was heading south when he saw it hit a man and a woman. He said that he thought it at first was a hit and run, but then he noticed other bodies lying on the ground.
“Blood started gushing out of his head, and she was bleeding really badly, too,” DeMatos said.