2018 Toronto van attack

Minassian attended a special needs class for students within the autism spectrum while at Thornlea Secondary School; Minassian's mother is quoted as saying in a 2009 article that her son has Asperger syndrome.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he was a student at Seneca College in North York from 2011 to 2018 and lived in Richmond Hill.

Minassian had attended Sixteenth Avenue Public School, an elementary school in Richmond Hill, in a special education class.

His former classmates at Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill described him as "not overly social" and "harmless".

In late 2017, Minassian enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces for two months, before requesting voluntary release after 16 days of recruit training.

A senior military official said that Minassian "wasn't adapting to military life, including in matters of dress, deportment and group interactions in a military setting" and "there were no red flags and nothing that would point to anything like this."

Following the attack, a Facebook post made by Minassian was uncovered in which he identified himself as an incel ("involuntary celibate").

A terrorist vehicle-ramming attack occurred on April 23, 2018, when a rented van was driven along Yonge Street through the North York City Centre business district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The driver, a 25-year-old man, targeted pedestrians, killing 11 and injuring 15, some critically.

The incident is the deadliest vehicle-ramming attack in Canadian history.

The attack started at the intersection of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue and proceeded south along the sidewalks of Yonge Street to near Sheppard Avenue.

Nine of the eleven killed were women.

The perpetrator, Alek Minassian, was arrested just south of the crime scene, after leaving the van and reportedly attempting to commit suicide by cop.

The arrest was made at 1:32p.m.EDT, seven minutes after the first 9-1-1 call was made.

The attack is characterized as misogynist terrorism because it was motivated by revenge for perceived sexual and social rejection by women.

At the time of his arrest, Minassian described himself as an incel to the police and in prior social media postings, and described the attack as the continuation of an "incel rebellion", started by the late Elliot Rodger.

Minassian pleaded not criminally responsible to the 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder in November 2020, but was found to be guilty on all counts in March 2021.

Anne Molloy, the judge of the case, said that "working out his exact motivation for this attack is... close to impossible" but that she "was inclined to accept" assessments by multiple expert witnesses that Minassian likely lied to the police and that notoriety was his main motivation, although misogyny or incel ideology may have played a role.

On June 13, 2022, Minassian was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

The first 9-1-1 call reporting pedestrians being hit was received at 1:25 p.m. Eastern Time.

At Finch Avenue, a white Chevrolet Express van, rented from Ryder, ran a red light, then drove southbound on the west-side sidewalk of Yonge Street, striking multiple pedestrians.

The van continued along the sidewalk for several more blocks, striking additional pedestrians.

Security camera video from a local business shows the van reaching Tolman Street, which is one block south of Finch Avenue, at 1:24 p.m. At one point, the van re-entered the roadway due to the narrowness of the sidewalk, but at Park Home Avenue, the van again drove onto the sidewalk, hitting pedestrians in front of Mel Lastman Square, a civic plaza on the west side of Yonge Street, 1.4 km south of Finch Avenue (16 blocks).

Paramedics were immediately called to the site, and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was activated as an emergency centre.

A single police officer in traffic control capacity, Toronto Police Service constable Ken Lam, intercepted the damaged van, which was stopped on the north sidewalk on Poyntz Avenue, just west of Yonge Street and two blocks south of Sheppard Avenue, about 2.3 km south of where the attack began.

Lam stopped his unmarked cruiser near the van and confronted the suspected driver, later identified as Alek Minassian, standing near the opened driver-side door.

During the confrontation, the driver of the van repeatedly drew his hand from his back pocket and pointed a dark-coloured object toward the officer as if it were a pistol.

Lam ordered the driver to drop to the ground, while the driver tried repeatedly to provoke the officer to kill him, demanding he be shot "in the head!"

when the officer warned him he may be shot.

Lam then went to his cruiser and turned off its siren.

As the driver and Lam advanced towards each other, the officer recognized that the object in the driver's hand was not a gun, holstered his pistol, and took out his baton to avoid the use of unnecessary lethal force.

The driver then dropped the object from his hand, lay down on the ground and surrendered to Lam.

He was arrested at 1:32 p.m.

Nine people died at the scenes.

At 8:15 p.m., 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 the hospital.

The eleven victims killed in the attack were:

Fifteen others were injured, including Robert Anderson, Amir Kiumarsi, Aleksandra Kozhevinikova, Mavis Justino, Morgan McDougall, Jun Seok Park, Samantha Peart, So Ra, Catherine Riddell, Sammantha Samson, Beverly Smith and Yunsheng Tian.

Police identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, who had no prior criminal history.

His father, Vahe, had moved from Armenia to Canada and worked as a software developer, and his mother, Sona, was from Iran and had a job at IT company Compugen Inc. Minassian was also an aspiring software and mobile app developer.