Murder charges have been laid after a man drove a car into a crowd at the Filipino Lapu-Lapu Day Block Party in Vancouver on Saturday evening, killing 11 people, including a 5-year-old.
Deputy Chief Const. Steve Rai says dozens more are injured, some of them critically, and some of those haven’t been identified.
Rai confirmed that a 30-year-old Vancouver man is in custody, adding the suspect “does have a significant history of interactions with police and health care professionals related to mental health.”
Court records identified the suspect as Adam Kai-Ji Lo, who has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder. Lo appeared in court Sunday and remains in custody, and police say “further charges are anticipated.”
A man with the same name as Lo lost his brother in a homicide in January 2024 in Vancouver. He started a fundraiser to help his family with funeral costs, and later that year, started a second one to help with costs after his mother attempted to take her life.
The Vancouver Police Department says the incident happened shortly after 8 p.m. near East 43rd Avenue and Fraser Street. Multiple emergency crews responded to the scene.
“This is the darkest day in our city’s history,” Rai said. “Last night, as thousands of members of Vancouver’s Filipino community gathered for an important cultural celebration, the actions of a single person shattered our collective sense of safety. It is impossible to overstate how many lives have been impacted forever by this lone individual.”
“There are many unanswered questions about why this horrific crime happened, the motive of the person who did it, and whether anything could have been done to prevent it,” he continued.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim says he’s directed a full review of safety measures at events such as these.
However, Sim says “the city is safe,” and noted that there are about 3,000 events and festivals held in Vancouver every year.
Sim says it appears that “mental health is the underlying issue” of the attack.
“The individual in question has a significant history of mental health issues,” he said.
“I want to be clear, if anything is to come of this tragedy, it has to be change. I personally will not stop in calling on governments to make these changes now.”
The Vancouver police department has said in the past that mental health calls take up a significant portion of policing resources.
Questions remain over barricades, police presence
Although the event was expected to wrap up around 8 p.m., many event-goers were still in the area when the attack happened.
“The vehicle that struck festival-goers approached the festival area from the west on East 43rd Avenue. It entered a small crowd, an enclosed area, and drove through the crowd. There were hundreds of festival goers still on the street, and multiple people were struck by the vehicle,” Rai described.
“The most critically injured were transported by ambulance to nine different hospitals throughout Metro Vancouver, and we want to extend our profound gratitude to all of the medical professionals who have worked throughout the night to care for the victims.”
Rai explained the suspect was found and held by witnesses and members of the public before VPD officers were able to get to the scene.
“While I’m not prepared to speak about the potential motive, I can now say with confidence that the evidence in this case does not lead us to believe this was an act of terrorism,” he said. “I am unable to publicly identify the person who is in custody because charges have not yet been laid. Homicide investigators are currently presenting evidence to Crown Counsel, which is the independent authority in British Columbia to lay criminal charges. We will provide additional information once the charge approval process is complete.”
Rai shared that more than 100 police officers are investigating the “senseless” attack.
Rai says there was nothing in the intelligence gathered ahead of the festival to suggest that it was a high-risk event that would require extra levels of protection like barriers.
Rai says it’s standard for police to review events for possible risks, and in this case, the festival was found to be a “family-friendly cultural event” with no history that raised any red flags. He says last year’s festival had no incidents
“It is hard to make sense of something so senseless, and I know there are questions about whether this tragedy could have been prevented,” he added, before reiterating that the city and stakeholders conducted a risk assessment prior to the day.
“We determined through consultations with the City of Vancouver and festival organizers that dedicated police officers and heavy vehicle barricades would not be deployed at the festival site.”
“While I’m confident the joint risk assessment and public safety plan was sound, we will be working with our partners at the City of Vancouver to review all of the circumstances surrounding the planning of this event today, our focus must be on the victims and their families, their community and our city and the ongoing criminal investigation,” he said.
“This is a tragic incident. This is not something we’re used to in our beautiful city, and all of our police officers, paramedics, fire [fighters], everyone is fully supporting the family and members of the community, and we’re going to continue to do so throughout this ordeal, as we piece together what’s occurred here,” Rai explained at the time.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “shocked, devastated, and heartbroken” to hear of the attack, adding that there are no active threats to Canadians.
“I would like to offer my deepest condolences and my wishes for strength and compassion in this tragic time,” Carney said. “I know that I join all Canadians in mourning with you.”
During his remarks, Carney said he was briefed by his public safety minister and national security adviser and will pause his election campaign to meet with B.C. Premier David Eby and Sim on Sunday.
Eby held a news conference Sunday near the site of the attack, telling reporters in a shaky voice that he had attended the event with his daughter on Saturday afternoon before the attack. He paid tribute to the Filipino community.
“British Columbians are right to be angry. Here’s a community that has done nothing but give, has been overlooked in terms of their contributions to our province, to this city, to this country. It is finally having an event where their culture is upheld and celebrated and it’s destroyed by a single individual.”
The premier said B.C. residents will support the Filipino community “just like they support us every single day in this province.”
‘It was total chaos’
One witness told 1130 NewsRadio on Saturday night that their daughter was helping run a food truck at the Lapu Lapu Festival when the incident unfolded. They said there were suddenly screams as the driver of a black SUV ripped through the crowd, striking more than a dozen people.
The witness said multiple people were given CPR, and claimed the driver of the SUV attempted to get out of the vehicle and flee on foot. They said the driver was held by multiple people on the scene until police arrived.
Witness Abigail told 1130 NewsRadio that she and her friends were near John Oliver Secondary School when they heard the revving of a car.
“And then we hear people shouting. We heard ‘bang, bang, bang’ and then when we went to look, that’s when I saw one person lying already on the street and I called 911,” she said.
“Everyone was panicking. When I went towards where the car when, that’s when I saw a lot more people that were injured, some already dead. Broken arms, broken bodies, about 20 casualties, or 30,” she added.
Abigail shared that the vehicle’s airbags had deployed, and the driver was nowhere to be seen. She says that one person she spoke to saw the driver, who she said was wearing a white t-shirt, jump over a fence.
“When I got there, the car was already stopped, parked, the driver’s door is open, but the driver is not there,” Abigail said.
She explained that it felt like five or 10 minutes before police and ambulances got to the scene.
“It was total chaos,” she said.
Abigail was unsure of how the car and driver were able to get into the area with the food trucks, as she explains that the area was difficult to get into. “So, it’s like, you have to get through that alley to get through to that street,” she said.
Another witness said that she and some friends were sitting down eating when all of a sudden they heard “really loud bangs.”
“I whipped my head and saw this car, at least going 90 [kilometres an hour]. There’s definitely people that got hurt, killed. … It’s a really shocking sight,” she told CityNews.
“It’s so scary. We’re still in shock after what happened. … Ambulances and stretchers got pulled out, I also saw that there was a little kid that got pulled in the stretcher, it was really sad,” she said. “I had no time to figure out what kind of car it was, because it was kind of a ‘blink of an eye.’ It was really fast.”
Footage posted on social media from the scene shows victims and debris strewn across a long stretch of road, with dozens of people lying immobile on the ground.
A black Audi SUV with a crumpled front section could be seen in photos from the scene.
One video from the scene shows a person lying lifeless underneath a food truck, with a person in the background yelling to first responders, “There’s a baby, there’s a baby under the truck!”
Vancouver Coun. Pete Fry told CityNews on Saturday night that he heard that the suspect “intentionally” drove the car into the crowd.
“It’s a horrible, horrible, horrible day for our city,” Fry said.
He said that this kind of tragedy is something that Vancouver has never experienced before, “Not in my time in council, not in my memory as a resident.”
“This is not the kind of thing that we’ve experienced before … it’s just horrible,” Fry added.
Local federal NDP candidate Don Davies was at the festival just hours before the attack. He told CityNews that the incident is just “shocking, appalling.”
“The event this morning was full of joy and celebration. Thousands of people gathering together to celebrate Filipino culture. I’m just shocked, and my heart goes out to all of the victims and their families, and people who are injured, and just trying to process that this is in Vancouver-Kingsway, in my riding,” he explained.
Lapu-Lapu Day is named after an Indigenous resistance fighter in the Philippines who fought against Spanish colonization in the 16th Century.
Davies explained that he was door-knocking in his riding, ahead of Monday’s federal election, when the incident happened.
“I saw emergency vehicles and police cars screaming by. And it became apparent pretty quickly that something major had happened, because there weren’t just three or four police cars, there were heavy-duty emergency response vehicles and ambulances, and so I started checking my feed, and someone sent me a little bit of live footage of what had happened. And I saw there was a devastating attack with many, many people injured,” he explained.
“This might be the worst single day of an attack on innocent people that I can remember,” he added.
“My heart goes up to the Filipino community, and it’s one of the most vibrant, lovely communities that we have in the Lower Mainland, in Canada, ad to have their celebration marred by such an appalling act of destruction, it just … it just makes me sick to my stomach and my prayers belong to everybody in the Filipino community and larger community.
“We’ll get through this, but for now, we’re just gonna have to grieve and try to find out and make sense of what happened,” Davies said.
Former police officer and local MP Harjit Sajjan told CityNews that he couldn’t believe what he was reading when he received a message about the tragedy.
“I didn’t believe that it was real. … This is a family event, I just can’t imagine the people who, what they witnessed; what they’re going through, the victims’ families. I just want the families to know that we’re here for them. That’s the only reason I’m here, and the Vancouver Police, I have the utmost confidence, I’m a former member, they’ll get to the bottom of this and provide all the necessary information. Right now, this is just about showing the community that we care,” he said.
–With files from Charlie Carey, Srushti Gangdev, Chad Harris, Emma Crawford, David Nadalini, Angelyna Mintz, Jack Rabb, Shravan Raghavan, Ben Bouguerra, Dean Recksiedler, Courtney Howe, Erin Conners, Tom Walters, Denio Lourenco, and Ridley Wilson.
