VANCOUVER - Vancouver is waking to the tragic aftermath of a deadly vehicle attack on a Filipino community street festival that killed at least nine people, with survivors describing horrifying scenes of victims strewn on the ground
Interim Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai said a 30-year-old Vancouver man was arrested for Saturday night’s attack in which an SUV plowed through a crowded South Vancouver street at high speed.
Vancouver Police said on social media platform X that they were “confident” the incident was not an act of terrorism, and the death toll stood at nine as of 3 a.m. Sunday.
Rai said multiple people were also injured but the exact number of casualties won’t be released until families have been notified.
Realtor Abigail Andiso said she saw a couple dozen people on the ground after the black SUV roared through the middle of the crowd at the Lapu Lapu Day festival just after 8 p.m.
The car went through the whole street
“I can see straight away there’s about 20 or 30, maybe 20 people down, and everyone is panicking. Everyone is screaming and nobody knows what to do.”
Carayn Nulada said she pulled her granddaughter and grandson off the street and used her body to shield them.
She said her daughter, the children’s mother, suffered a narrow escape when the SUV clipped her arm.
Nulada said her daughter was able to get back up, and her injuries were minor, but other victims lay scattered on the ground around her.
“The car hit her arm and she fell down, but she got up, looking for us because she is scared,” said Nulada, who described children screaming and pale-faced victims lying on the ground or wedged under vehicles.
I saw people running and my daughter was shaking
Nulada was in Vancouver General Hospital’s emergency room early Sunday morning trying to find news about her brother, who suffered multiple broken bones.
Doctors identified him by presenting the family with his wedding ring in a pill bottle and said he was stable but would be facing surgery.
Witnesses of the attack described bodies being sent flying by impact with the SUV. Videos show wreckage and victims scattered across a long stretch of road after the attack, which police said took place around East 43rd Avenue and Fraser Street.
Nic Magtajas described an SUV roaring through the crowd at high speed.
“I saw a bunch of people go over, go high up from the impact of hitting the car,” said Magtajas, 19.
He and Jihed Issa were working at a store facing the festival and said they initially had their backs to the scene when they heard a car engine revving.
“People were screaming,” said Issa, 17.
“I ran outside to the street and I was trying to figure out what happened. I made it to halfway into the street, looked around (and) there was a lot of people panicking, people on the floor — bodies.”
Police said a 24-hour assistance centre had been established at the Douglas Park Community Centre, on West 22nd Avenue.
“Vancouver Police officers and victim services professionals have been deployed to help anyone who has not been able to contact a loved one who was at the Lapu Lapu (Festival),” VPD said on X.
Political leaders expressed dismay at the incident, with Prime Minister Mark Carney briefly pausing his election campaign to address the attack at a news conference.
“Last night, families lost a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a son, a daughter,” he said in Hamilton, Ont.
Carney said Canadians were shocked, devastated and heartbroken as he offered condolences to the Filipino-Canadian community and the broader communities of the Lower Mainland and Vancouver.
“I know that I join all Canadians in mourning with you,” he said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said on social media platform X that he was shocked by news of the “senseless attack,” while NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who had earlier been at the festival, said he was “horrified.”
The attack made international headlines by Sunday morning. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he was “completely shattered” to hear the news and expressed “deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and to the strong and thriving Filipino community in Canada.”
“We are one with the families of the victims and the Filipino community in Vancouver during this difficult time,” he said in a statement posted to social media.
King Charles said he and his wife were “profoundly saddened” by the attack and “send our deepest possible sympathy at a most agonizing time for so many in Canada.”
Members of the Filipino community turned up at Vancouver General Hospital to support victims’ families.
Lourdes Venegas and her friend Teresita Landingin were having dinner at a restaurant when they heard of the attack.
“We decided we would just come, just in case there is anything that we could do to help our countrymen, as well as the staff here,” said Venegas.
They comforted the Nulada family, placing their hands on their knees and praying.
Lapu Lapu Day is named after an Indigenous resistance fighter in the Philippines who fought against Spanish colonization in the 16th Century.
The incident is the latest horrific car attack to take place in Canada in recent years.
- A Quebec man currently stands accused of killing two children and injuring six others in February 2023 when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare. The crown and defence jointly submitted evidence the man was likely in a state of psychosis at the time and are expected to recommend he be found not criminally responsible.
Four members of a Muslim family were struck and killed by a pickup truck in June 2021 in an incident a judge later deemed an act of terrorism.
In Toronto on April 23, 2018, a 25-year-old man drove a rented van into mostly female pedestrians on Yonge Street, killing 10 people and injuring 16.
