A driver plowed into a street festival honoring Canada’s Filipino population in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday evening, killing “a number of people,” according to the local police.
The police said they had taken one suspect into custody: the driver, a 30-year-old man from Vancouver. In a news conference overnight, local officials did not specify the number of fatalities and injured, saying only that they were multiple.
They also did not address a possible motive, but said the driver had already been known to the police. Members of the crowd had subdued the man before the police got to the scene.
People were out celebrating the Lapu Lapu Day festival in the southern part of the city when the driver went into the crowd shortly after 8 p.m., the Vancouver Police Department said on social media.
Video from the local news media showed ambulances and police cars lining the roads near the festival, with emergency medical workers tending to people on the ground.
Vancouver’s mayor, Ken Sim, said he was “shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific incident.”
A spokeswoman for the Vancouver General Hospital said they had received multiple patients who were injured at the festival.
In a social media post, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said he was “devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver earlier this evening.”
“I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver,” he said. “We are all mourning with you.”
Lapu Lapu Day was officially declared on April 27, 2023, by the province of British Columbia as a testament to the legacy of Datu Lapu-Lapu, a chieftain from Mactan, Philippines, who is considered a national hero for rising up against Spanish colonizers in the early 1500s. Authorities said that up to 100,000 people had attended the festival on Saturday.
There are nearly a million Filipino immigrants and people of Filipino descent living in Canada, according to the government. The province of British Columbia is home to nearly a fifth of that number.
