Vancouver Police look over a black car believed to be involved in an incident where a vehicle drove into a crowd at the Lapu Lapu Festival in Vancouver on Saturday April 26, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rich Lam

By The Canadian Press

Festival Attack

Ages of 11 victims at Vancouver festival range from 5 to 65: Police

Apr 27, 2025 | 4:15 PM

A man in a vehicle raced along a street lined with food trucks at a Filipino community festival in Vancouver, killing 11 people and injuring two dozen others in an attack the interim police chief called the “darkest day” in the city’s history.

Deputy Chief Const. Steve Rai told a news briefing on Sunday that the death toll could rise further after the attack in which a black Audi SUV sped through a South Vancouver street crowded with hundreds of festival patrons.

Witnesses have said victims were sent flying as a vehicle sped through the crowd at the Lapu Lapu Day festival just after 8 p.m. on Saturday night, and Rai said the casualties were of all ages, including “young people.”

“It’s just a tragedy all around for many families,” Rai told a news conference.

A 30-year-old Vancouver man was arrested at the scene and remains in custody.

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Rai said police have had a “significant history” of interactions with the man.

“We’ve had substantive contact with him over mental health issues,” he said.

While a motive is not known, he said police were confident terrorism was not involved.

The suspect won’t be identified until charges are laid, Rai said.

Filipino-Canadian Association of Sask. devastated

Filipino-Canadian Association of Saskatchewan co-president Jenelyn Santos-Ong woke up to the tragic news of the deaths and destruction at the Lapu Lapu Day festival on Sunday morning.

“Just, early morning waking up and checking to see what happened in the news recently, and my first reaction was just shock and sadness,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe that something like this had happened, trying to understand why it happened, but more so just worry and care about the Filipinos in Vancouver.”

Her organization is also reaching out to the Vancouver festival organizers to see if there’s any way they can help.

“We haven’t heard back from them yet,” she added.

Santos-Ong also has friends and family in Vancouver, but said none of them were at the festival at the time of the incident.

“What we’re trying to do is just keep communication lines open so that we can find out what we can do to support Filipinos here in Saskatchewan and then reaching out to their family members in Vancouver if they’re not able to get a hold of them,” Santos-Ong said.

At this time, the group is also deciding whether a vigil will be held or any other tribute to the victims.

Vancouver Police continue to investigate

The attack left bodies and debris strewn across a long section of road near Fraser Street and West 43rd Avenue.

“This is the darkest day in our city’s history,” Rai said, calling the attack a “senseless, heartbreaking act of violence.”

B.C. Premier David Eby held a news conference Sunday near the site of the attack, telling reporters in a shaky voice that he had attended the event with his daughter on the afternoon before Saturday’s attack.

“British Columbians are right to be angry. Here’s a community that has done nothing but give, has been overlooked in terms of their contributions to our province, to this city, to this country. It is finally having an event where their culture is upheld and celebrated and it’s destroyed by a single individual.”

The premier said British Columbians will support the Filipino community “just like they support us every single day in this province.”

Hip-hop artist Jacob Bureros attended a church service Sunday where members of the Filipino community gathered.

He said he had just wrapped up his performance at the festival when he saw the vehicle running through the crowd of people then quickly come to a stop.

“He jumped out of the car and ran, and so, we chased him down,” said Bureros.

He said the scene was chaotic and horrifying.

“There was a young woman in the middle of the road, there was someone who was holding their loved ones screaming, people running up and down, looking for their kids,” said Bureros, “I don’t even have words for it right now, it’s just really horrible.”

Realtor Abigail Andiso said she saw a couple dozen people on the ground after the SUV roared through the crowd.

“The car went just through the whole street,” she said.

“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.”

B.C. Emergency Health Services says its ambulances took 26 patients to hospital in conditions “ranging from critical to serious.”

Police said the victims were sent to nine hospitals around the Lower Mainland.

Carayn Nulada said she pulled her granddaughter and grandson off the street and used her body to shield them when she realized what was unfolding. She said her daughter was clipped by the SUV.

“I saw people running and my daughter was shaking.”

Nulada was in Vancouver General Hospital’s emergency room Sunday looking for 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 need surgery.

Witness 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.

Police barricades and tape sealed off a section of Fraser Street from West 41st Avenue to 43rd Avenue and bunches of flowers were starting to pile up in tribute to the victims on Sunday.

Rai said a risk assessment was conducted before the event and police had decided no heavy-vehicle barricades would be placed at the event.

While Rai said he was confident that assessment was “sound,” a review of the circumstances surrounding the planning would be conducted with the City of Vancouver.

“It goes without saying, this will change the landscape for deployment for police,” Rai said, noting they assess about 1,000 protests and 2,200 events a year.

“The system has worked up to this point.”

A statement on social media from Public Safety Canada said officials believe the attack was an isolated incident, “and that there is no active threat to Canadians.”

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.

The attack made international headlines and 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.”

“Stay strong, our friends in Canada and the Philippines,” wrote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his own statement of condolence.

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 is accused of killing two children and injuring six others in February 2023 when a city bus drove into a Montreal-area daycare.

Four members of a Muslim family were struck and killed by a pickup truck in London, Ont., in June 2021 in an attack 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 11 people.

— with files from The Associated Press and 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff