Eight of the 10 people killed in the Toronto van attack on Monday were women, police have confirmed.
Inspector Bryan Bott has released the names of the victims who died when Alek Minassian mowed down pedestrians on a busy central street.
Toronto police announced those killed were “predominately” female after reports suggested the attacker had a grudge against women.
Minassian appears to have belonged to the “Incel” movement, which represents men who blame women for their inability to have sex or form relationships.
Incels have been described as extremely misogynistic.
They meet on anonymous message boards like 4chan and incels.me to vent their frustrations about perceived injustices served on men by women.
Moments before mowing down eight innocent women and two men on a busy Toronto street, Minassian wrote on Facebook: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Elliot Rodger was a college dropout who shot six people dead on the University of California campus in Santa Barbara in 2014.
The day before the killing spree he had uploaded a video to the internet complaining about the perceived treatment he received from women.
Toronto police revealed the 10 people who died on Monday were aged between 22 and 94.
Beutis Renuka Amarasingha, 45, Geraldine Brady, 83, So He Chung, 22 and Anne Marie D’Amico, 30, all from Toronto, were among the women killed.
Mary Forsyth, 94, Ji Hun Kim, 22, and Dorothy Sewell, 80, also from Toronto were also killed.
The eighth woman Andrea Bradden, 33, was from Woodbridge in Ontario.
Munir Najjar, an 85-year-old Jordanian man visiting Toronto was also killed, along with Chul Min Kang, 45.
A police officer confronted Minassian in the street after the rampage and was later praised for not shooting him during a tense stand-off.
Dramatic video showed the officer, who has not been named, refusing to shoot as the 25-year-old pointed something that appeared to be a gun at him.
Minassian could be heard shouting “kill me” before the officer replied: “No, get down.”
From – SkyNews
