During the Halloween celebration, “we were experiencing a night of horror when a 24-year-old man, who does not live in Quebec, came here with the intention of causing as many victims as possible,” the city’s police chief said on Sunday. Canadian, Robert Pigeon.
The criminal, arrested during the night after a chase through the streets of Quebec, committed the attacks in the historic center of the city, near the Chateau Frontenac hotel and the National Assembly, the most tourist area of the capital of the French-speaking province of the same name, causing two fatalities and five wounded.
The police chief said two of the victims had been French residents of Quebec for some years, without explaining whether they were among the dead or injured. The lives of the five wounded are not at risk, he said, before revealing that some suffered “significant lacerations”.
According to Pigeon “everything seems to indicate” that the aggressor, armed with a Japanese sword and wearing medieval clothes, “chose the victims at random” and that the criminal “is not associated with a terrorist group”.
“I believe he planned the attack,” said Pigeon, noting that the young man “voiced his desire to act” five years ago, but had no criminal record.
Quebec’s mayor, Régis Labeaume, classified the acts as “mind-blowing, terrifying and beyond understanding”, while citing the young man’s “mental health” problems.
“All of Quebec is in mourning,” lamented the region’s deputy prime minister, Geneviève Guilbault, in denouncing “barbaric” acts. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited a “terrible tragedy” when commenting on the news. on twitter.
Karin Lacoste, a Quebec resident, intended to buy a meal at night when she observed armed police officers and bulletproof vests. “One of them said, ‘Run home because there’s a killer out there who’s already killed some people,'” he told LCN.
According to three witnesses quoted by the newspaper Le Soleil, the attacker slaughtered the first victim near the Chateau Frontenac hotel and there was “a lot of blood”. The man then killed the second person on Remparts Street and, on his way to Porto Antigo, wounded others, according to the newspaper.
The suspect surrendered to the police and, at the time of the arrest, was on the floor, barefoot and hypothermic, Le Soleil said, while authorities said the criminal was “transported to a hospital for examination”.
The attacker, born in Montreal, the largest city in the province, is expected to attend a videoconference hearing in the next few hours.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the streets of Quebec’s historic center were short of people at the time of the attacks, said journalist Jordan Proust. “Most kids celebrated Halloween in the afternoon,” he said.
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