Multiple people have been killed and a number of others injured after a man drove a car into a crowd at the Filipino Lapu Lapu Day street festival in Vancouver on Saturday.
The Vancouver Police Department says the incident happened shortly after 8 p.m. near East 43rd Avenue and Fraser Street.
“The driver is in custody,” the VPD said on X just before 9:30 p.m.
Multiple police and other first responders remain on the scene at East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street.
In an update by VPD Interim Chief Steve Rai just after 12 a.m., police confirm that a 30-year-old Vancouver man is in custody. Rai says the suspect is “known to police.”
“We have some knowledge of interactions. It would be unfair and inappropriate to the investigation and to a proper conclusion for the investigation if I taint it with any details right now,” he said.
Rai declined to share exactly how many people have been killed or injured during the incident as victims’ families continue to be notified.
“It would be unfair for me to speculate on exact numbers, as the victims were taken to multiple hospitals in the region, so not just one hospital, multiple hospitals. And it would be unfair to the facts of the case and unfair to the families for me to release any number at this point,” he explained.
“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.
How the driver was able to get into the street festival, Rai declined to address. “All events that we hold in Vancouver, about 3,000 a year, are robustly assessed. It’s an entire city of Vancouver process — fire, police, traffic control, every stakeholder is engaged in it. So, we’re still working through exactly what was cordoned off, and how this occurred with the vehicle.”
One witness tells 1130 NewsRadio that their daughter was helping run a food truck at the Lapu Lapu Festival when the incident unfolded. They say there were suddenly screams as the driver of a black SUV ripped through the crowd, striking more than a dozen people.
The witness says multiple people were given CPR, and claims the driver of the SUV attempted to get out of the vehicle and flee on foot. They say the driver was held by multiple people on the scene until police arrived.
Abigail tells 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 says 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 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 explains that it felt like five or 10 minutes before police and ambulances got to the scene.
“It was in total chaos,” she said.
Abigail is 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 barricaded. “So, it’s like, you have to get through that alley to get through to that street,” she said.
Another says 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 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 still 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 says that he’s hearing that the person “intentionally” drove the car into the crowd.
“It’s a horrible, horrible, horrible day for our city,” Fry said.
He says 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.
In a post to social media, B.C.’s Emergency Health Services says it’s seeing some delays in its response times across the Lower Mainland due to the incident in Vancouver.
“If you aren’t sure you need paramedics tonight, please call 811,” it said. “We appreciate your patience as we respond to those who need help the most first.”
–With files from Srushti Gangdev, Chad Harris, Emma Crawford, Charlie Carey, David Nadalini, Angelyna Mintz, Jack Rabb, Shravan Raghavan, Ben Bouguerra, Dean Recksiedler, Courtney Howe, and Ridley Wilson.
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