How Alek Minassian came to be convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder for the April 23, 2018, van attack on Yonge Street in Toronto.
Crime Canada newsroomPublished
Alek Minassian, then 25, was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. On April 23, 2018, he drove a rented van along the sidewalks of Yonge Street in the North York City Centre district of Toronto, Ontario. The attack killed 11 people, one of whom died in October 2021, and injured 15 others. He admitted that he had planned and carried out the attack but argued that he was not criminally responsible. Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy rejected that defence and found him guilty on March 3, 2021. On June 13, 2022, he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
On April 23, 2018, Minassian's father dropped him off at a bookstore in Woodbridge. Minassian had told him he was meeting a friend there, which was not true. He walked about four kilometres to a Ryder rental outlet and picked up a van he had booked three weeks earlier. He told the clerk he would use it to move furniture. He then drove east on Highway 7 and turned south onto Yonge Street.
Shortly after 1 p.m., at Finch Avenue, he drove onto the west sidewalk of Yonge Street and struck a group of pedestrians. He continued south, mostly on the sidewalks and at one point against traffic on the roadway, past Park Home Avenue and Mel Lastman Square. He finally stopped the van on the sidewalk of Poyntz Avenue, about 2.3 kilometres south of where the attack began.
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Nine people died at the scene. At 8:15 p.m. that evening, the Toronto Police Service announced that a tenth person had died. An eleventh person died on October 28, 2021, after being paralyzed from the neck down and never leaving hospital. The 11 people who died were nine women and two men, aged 22 to 94. They included two South Korean nationals and a Jordanian national. The 15 people injured were ten women and five men, aged 21 to 90.
Toronto Police Constable Ken Lam intercepted the van on Poyntz Avenue. Minassian had stepped out of the vehicle. He pointed a wallet at the officer as if it were a gun and repeatedly tried to provoke him into shooting. Once Constable Lam realized the object was not a firearm, he holstered his pistol and drew his baton instead. Minassian dropped the wallet and lay down on the ground. He was arrested at 1:32 p.m.
Police closed sections of Yonge Street for more than 24 hours for a forensic investigation. The Toronto Transit Commission shut down North York Centre subway station and diverted bus routes. Police said Minassian had no prior criminal record. He had been a student at Seneca College. In late 2017, he had spent a short period in the Canadian Armed Forces before asking for a voluntary release during recruit training.
After the attack, a Facebook post by Minassian came to light. It was dated shortly before the attack. In it, he described himself as an "incel" (involuntary celibate) and praised Elliot Rodger, who carried out the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California. Facebook confirmed that the account belonged to Minassian.
On April 24, 2018, Minassian appeared without a lawyer before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. He was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. He was ordered not to contact any of the people named in the attempted murder counts. By May 10, 2018, the number of attempted murder counts had risen to 16. Toronto criminal defence lawyer Boris Bytensky later represented him. The case went through repeated delays, and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the trial to November 2020.
The trial began on November 10, 2020, before Justice Anne Molloy. Because of the pandemic, it was held over Zoom. Minassian had already admitted that he planned and carried out the attack. He pleaded not criminally responsible to the 10 counts of first-degree murder and the 16 counts of attempted murder.
On November 12, 2020, the court heard from a psychiatrist retained by the defence. The psychiatrist's report said that Minassian's "autistic way of thinking was severely distorted in a way similar to psychosis", although Minassian was not technically psychotic. Autism rights advocates criticized the defence's attempt to rely on autism. They were concerned that the trial could worsen stigma against autistic people.
In her decision, Justice Molloy referred to the accused as "Mr. Doe" so as not to give him further recognition. She wrote that it was "almost impossible to tell when Mr. Doe is lying and when he is telling the truth" and that working out his exact motivation was "likewise close to impossible". She was nevertheless inclined to accept the assessment of all the experts that he had lied to police about much of the incel motivation he described. In her view, the incel movement was not a primary driving force behind the attack. She found that he appeared to be motivated by a desire for notoriety. She rejected the argument that his autism made him not criminally responsible.
On March 3, 2021, Justice Molloy found Minassian guilty on all counts. The verdict was streamed live on YouTube.
Sentencing was put off until 2022. The court was waiting for the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R v Bissonnette, which dealt with whether prisoners can be made to serve murder sentences consecutively.
On June 13, 2022, Minassian was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. In July 2022, he filed a notice of appeal. Among other things, it argued that the trial judge had "misapprehended" expert evidence and made unreasonable findings. The sources do not report the outcome of that appeal, and they do not report that the conviction was overturned.
The attack happened while G7 security ministers were meeting in Toronto ahead of the 2018 G7 summit in La Malbaie, Quebec. After being briefed, the ministers added discussions on soft targets, terrorism, social media and online youth radicalization. The attack was also included in the federal government's 2018 Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada.
Constable Ken Lam was widely praised for ending the confrontation without firing his weapon, even though the suspect was trying to provoke a fatal response. Lam said he was simply doing his job.
The City of Toronto set up the #TorontoStrong Fund to support victims, their families, first responders and others affected. Former mayor Barbara Hall was named fund administrator on June 13, 2018. By December 2018, more than $4 million had been distributed to people affected by the van attack and by the Danforth shooting of July 2018.
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