594
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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.”

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 162 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 72 points 1 month ago

It means they double checked and the driver was definitely white

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

He wasn't. I'm not going to post his name or race here, but he has been charged and his name made public.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago

Dude might have been drunk. If it isn't intentional, it's usually a case of too drunk or too old.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Or plain old mental illness

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Severe, severe mental illness. He wasn't drunk or old.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

What are you talking about, the victims weren't white?

/s

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

It's not terrorism just because the victims are white.

They also need to be billionaires.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It does resemble a terrorist attack...

But if you watched the press conference with the chief of police (or the equivalent title)...

They have the suspect in custody, there were no specific threats to the event before hand, the suspect has a long history of mental illness, and the suspect has had many previous run ins with the police, 'suspect is well known to the department'... gives me the impression this is a person who is having one kind of mental breakdown or another ... every month or other week.

At one point a reporter asked if it was terrorism and the CoP basically says... that would require a political or ideological motivation.

The CoP ... you could tell he was doing his best to divulge information he could without divulging information he couldn't. He paused and tried to rephrase things a few times, openly struggled with ... seemingly genuinely being unclear about what he was legally allowed to say.

If the person truly is seriously mentally ill, there may be additional laws in place protecting some extra level of their privacy, at least before charges are actually brought.

Put all that together, and it seems like this person has been just... very very seriously mentally ill for a long time, as in, too mentally ill to be capable of forming a coherent or describable ideology.

Or, at the very least, that seems to me to be what the police are saying.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 56 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

Apparently it was mental health related, and he was apologizing when he came out of the car

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

I prefer to call them "Poilievre voters"

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I'm going out on a limb here, but [NPC karma farming opinion]

load more comments (16 replies)
[-] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Why would you guess? You can literally just look it up. It's all over the news.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

Cars are a terrorist threat! We should remove them from our streets.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Only a good guy with a car can stop a bad guy with a car though. Also if everyone in a crowd had a car, stuff like this wouldn't be possible.

/s for the people in the back

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Actually, I agree. Put them underground, in a tunnel, where people aren't walking.

Walking > Bikes > Trains > Buses > fuck cars.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Don't put them in the city at all, even in a tunnel. If you're going into the city, park and take transit. (Edit: my complaint here is personal; Boston had an interstate running through it, which they buried, and then put a four-to-six-lane road on top of it where there was supposed to be green space.)

Yeah, I know some people can't do that because they're working and need tools, e.g. plumbers, but if we get all the casual drivers on transit it's good enough.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Conservatives are a terrorist threat

FTFY

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

"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.

[-] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

"gun-involved incident"

load more comments (40 replies)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

There are a lot of areas that were designed based on cars. Where I live would be difficult for most of the residents without cars or something similar. The population density is too low to make most public transportation practical.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Good news, in those places a driver going off the road isn't going to hit a crowd of people.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I completely agree. If you look at the comment I was responding to, though, you'll see they appear to be advocating a complete prohibition, "Cars need to go. Away forever." I'm just saying there are places where that's not practical.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Can mods do something about this thread? Everyone is engaging in friendly speculation that it was terrorism, because their lizard brains are remembering the Toronto attack. This was a mental health problem. The suspect was not a white supremacist. Go back to America please.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

In this case I have too little insight. But it's quite clear how biased these reports are in Germany. Anyone not absolutely German is immediately a terrorist and every white, German dude is a confused loner. Media never suspects that mental issues based on trauma from war and refugee journeys might be a good reason or that guys voting for right wing extremists and killing "woke" people might have anything to do with their political views.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Report the comments.

While yes, ideally it would've been nice if it didn't happen, but there's not enough mods to police this place. It's still better than news... That place is a complete shitshow.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago
load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Maybe it's time to revisit our car-centric lifestyle.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

This is absolutely terrible.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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 ~~guns~~ cars at a time like this? I can't believe you're using this tragic ~~mass-shooting~~ mass-ramming to soapbox about ~~gun~~ car regulation. This isn't the time to talk about how we let ~~guns~~ cars be so dangerous and how the direct result was this ~~shooting~~ ramming. The real cause of this was a mental health crisis. Society needs ~~guns~~ cars to ~~protect ourselves~~ get around. What do you mean, 'Do I ever bring up this mental health crisis outside of ~~mass-shootings~~ mass-rammings?' Uhh..."

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
594 points (98.7% liked)

World News

46836 readers
3167 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS