Edmonton police stabbed, truck runs over people in terror attack pic.twitter.com/igoIwJUux4
— Globalnews.ca (@globalnews) October 1, 2017
Canadian authorities are treating a one-man, multi-site, Saturday night spree as terrorism, as this Global News clip reveals. The chaos unfolded in downtown Edmonton, where a driver apparently used two different vehicles to carry out mayhem spread over three different crime scenes. The 30-year-old male suspect conducted his first attack outside the Commonwealth Stadium during a Edmonton Eskimos game. There, he slammed a Chevy Malibu into a traffic-control barricade, and in doing so, he struck a police car, exited the Malibu, and stabbed a cop multiple times.
Somehow, the officer was not critically wounded, although the suspect tried his hardest to do so. According to CNN, “The vehicle struck the police officer, sending him flying into the air 15 feet, before colliding with the police officer’s cruiser again at a high rate of speed.”
At that point, the suspect “fled on foot,” and a few hours later, he barreled down a nearby street in a U-Haul truck. Reportedly, the driver was identified by cops at a drunk-driving checkpoint, and while speeding away from officers, he mowed down four pedestrians in front of a bar. The truck then rolled onto its side, thereby ending the night with an arrest. The pedestrians survived and are now being treated at a nearby hospital.
During a press conference, Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht stated that the “incidents are being investigated as acts of terrorism.” The Edmonton Journal reports that an ISIS flag was found in the Chevy Malibu used within the first attack. At this time, authorities believe the suspect acted alone on Saturday night, although they haven’t weighed out the possibility that someone (or some organization) provided him with assistance.
(Via Global News, CNN, Fox News & Edmonton Journal)