The Safety and Security of Crowds Attending Public Events

"[We offer our] deepest condolences to the victims of the Lapu Lapu Day Festival, their families and the entire Filipino community during this incredibly challenging time."

"Vancouver Coastal Health can confirm the alleged driver of the vehicle was under the care of a mental health team and on extended leave in accordance with the Mental Health Act."

"Extended leave is intended to help clients maintain their treatment plans while transitioning back to community for ongoing support."

"The care team followed established guidelines for a client on extended leave, and there was no indication this person was not following their treatment plan or presented a public safety risk."

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, Vancouver, British Columbia 

"[If a] director considers that leave would benefit a patient detained in the designated facility, the director may release the patient on leave from the designated facility providing appropriate support exists in the community to meet the conditions of the leave."

Subject 37, British Columbia Mental Health Act

Police and first responders are pictured at the intersection of Fraser Street and 43rd Avenue after a vehicle struck a street festival crowd on Saturday. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

The day prior to a deliberate car ramming at a Philippine festival put on by a Filipino-Canadian community in Vancouver, accused mass killer Kai-ji Adam Lo showed up at the Richmond B.C. RCMP detachment in an evident state of disturbance, claiming that someone had been tossing things into his SUV. When an officer followed him outside to search the contents in the back of the black Audi, there was absolutely nothing there. This was the vehicle used by its owner a day later when he killed 11 people at the Filipino street festival.

 

As Lo drove off, the Mountie entered a report into the police computer system, known as PRIME. Following the 26 April car ramming when the 30-year-old driver plowed his SUV through a crowd of festival-goers at the Lapu Lapu event on Saturday in a psychotic rage of killing and injuring men, women and children, officers ran the suspect's name through the PRIME database that revealed the brief interaction of the day before between the mass murderer and a member of the RCMP detachment.

 

Emergency crews respond to the scene. Vancouver police say the driver is in custody. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

 

Now charged with eight counts of second degree murder, with more charges anticipated, Lo's mental health record may very well be used in a court of law to effectively pardon him from his unspeakable crime of mass murder on the basis of his mental condition blocking his innate and and social-values-driven prohibition against committing violent acts of gross criminality. Of the 32 injury victims of Lo's deliberate ramming of his vehicle into a crowded celebratory event of ethnic heritage and pride, 7 individuals are in critical condition while three others sustained serious injuries.

 

Kaiji Adam Lo, believed to have suffered from delusions and paranoia, had dozens of encounters with police over the years. He is now charged with driving his 2018 Audi SUV through a crowd of people on East 43rd Avenue around 8:00 p.m. Saturday at the Filipino festival. British Columbia Premier David Eby announced the creation of "an independent commission" on best practices to safely hold outdoor public events such as this one. There "will be quick turnaround, so that people can feel safe and comfortable attending and celebrating with their communities this summer", he promised.

"If you're worried that an inquiry would jeopardize this case, don't make the inquiry focused on this [tragic event], make it focused on the lack of effective intervention to prevent serious and deadly incidents in this province in the mental care system."

"Let's set this case aside then, and let's just look at the dozen -- at least -- other cases of injuries, dismemberment and even death that have occurred because of people who were mentally ill and obviously not receiving effective support."

B.C. Conservative public safety critic Elenore Sturko 

Police gather at the scene of the tragedy in Vancouver. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Inspiring Stories of Palestinian Heroism

"For about a minute, several people with guns stood around the vehicle and pointed at the driver, but did not shoot.'

'The driver made a sign with his hands as if to say 'no,' and everyone held their fire. At some point, someone threw a large stone at the vehicle, the attacker moved, and everyone fired at him."

Bystander, Yeshiva student

 

"I heard the noise and ran to the scene."

"At first everyone thought it was an accident, but then I heard the gunshots and realized it was an attack." 

Car-ramming witness, East Jerusalem

The scene of the car-ramming, in the Ramot neighborhood in East Jerusalem on Friday.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

 

Another deadly terrorist attack in Jerusalem. In a suburb of East Jerusalem, an area considered by the international community to be contested, 'occupied', since the Palestinian Authority claim it as their potential capital in a nascent state, a state they could have had in 1948, but refused and since them having turned down numerous peace offers that would lead to an internationally recognized state of their own, turned down as well, consistently. The while informing the international community that it is Israel's fault, for not negotiating in 'good faith'. Where in fact, Israel has offered all but two of the concessions that the PA demanded for peace, and the PA still turned them down offering no concessions of their own..

Palestinian children have grown into adults deeply steeped from their earliest formative years in a cauldron of hate to believe that 'resistance against the occupiers' as their leaders call it, is the only thing that will lead to a sovereign Palestinian state. Nurtured through children's media and school curricula which portray Jews as a threat to the existence of Palestinians, one that Palestinians must counter by pledging themselves as martyrs to their cause of statehood; they study geography texts whose maps show 'Palestine" encompassing the entire area, with no sign of the presence of Israel.

 

Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai at the scene of the ramming.Credit: Israel Police

 

To the international community which funds the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) program of the United Nations dedicated to the welfare of Palestinian 'refugees', the Palestinian Authority gives assurances of its willingness to become a peaceful law-abiding nation next to the State of Israel. To the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, incitement to terrorist acts against Israeli Jews is constant. Riots occur when Jews attempt to visit the plaza of the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism which Islam also claims as its third most sacred site. Jews are forbidden from praying there as it enrages Arab Palestinians to violence.

To the world at large Palestinians declare Israel to be an Apartheid State. Yet should a Jew venture accidentally into the West Bank or Gaza their lives are at risk, while in Israel 20 percent of its citizens are Palestinian Arabs; Israel, a home to Circassians, Druze, Kurds, Bedouin, Baha'i, Christians and Muslims. Arab Muslims serve as elected members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), as judges, are representative in all professions in the country; so much for Apartheid. 

Palestinian enmity and violent aggression against Jews and Israelis is fundamental to their narrative of 'victimhood'. As 'victims' when Palestinians commit violent offences against Jews they are celebrated as martyrs, streets named after them, and the Palestinian Authority raises them to the level of heroes. They and their families are handed out generous financial rewards for killing Jews. As it will be for the latest atrocity when on Friday a Palestinian man driving a Mazda drove it at speed directly into a crowd of people at a bus stop.

 

Five people were injured, among them an eight-year-old child taken to hospital who succumbed to his injuries several days later. At the scene of the crash the eight-year-old's six-year-old brother was pronounced dead. A 20-year-old newly-married Yeshiva student was also killed by the car ramming. An off-duty police officer who happened to be in the crowd at the bus stop shot the perpetrator dead in his vehicle. 

 

Eyewitnesses at the scene spoke of seeing the attacker steer his car into people waiting at the bus stop hours before the Jewish sabbath started. The sight of the attack was described as "shocking", with victims lying about on the street and sidewalk, by a responding Magen David Adom (Israeli Red Cross) medic.  

Members of Zaka Rescue and Recovery team work at the site of a car-ramming attack at a bus stop in Ramot, a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, Friday, Feb. 10, 2023.  (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

At the time of the attack the injured were brought to a Jerusalem hospital where a spokesperson for the Shaare Zedek Medical Center explained that the eight-year-old's life was in "immediate danger"; that child died a day after  his six-year-old brother died at the scene of the atrocity. The attacker was identified as a resident of Issawiya a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem bordering Hebrew University. Police were ordered to set up checkpoints around Issawiya.

International media somehow manage to overlook the fact that following the death of the six-year-old child and 20-year-old man, Palestinian media erupted in a frenzy of celebration, publishing cartoons glorifying the deaths and injuries. In the streets of Gaza  children were gleefully carrying about trays of sweets, offering them to passersby. Jubilation reigned. Symbolic of the complete and utter dehumanization of a community.

Man filming himself overseeing distribution of sweets celebrating terror attack in Jerusalem that killed an Israeli child and 20 year old newly-wed on Friday. Photo: Screenshot.

"We affirm that this blessed operation, which healed the hearts of our people, came as a natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupation", a statement by the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, summing up the numbing mindset of Palestinian revellers.  The attacker's uncle told the Palestine Post Network that Qaraqe "loved Palestine all his life, and he was suffering from a severe injury in his back", but he chose not to live in 'Palestine', but in Jerusalem. Sympathy is being elicited in the Arab media for the man who killed three Jews;  he had a history of lauding terrorists on social media, posting “Glory to the pure souls” in reference to those who committed previous atrocities.

 

In the U.S. media, a headline by CNN read: “Two dead including child as car rams people at Jerusalem bus stop,” which prompted the Israel Foreign Ministry to respond: “This wasn’t a self-driving car @CNN,” on Twitter. “The driver, a Palestinian terrorist *intentionally* rammed into a bus stop packed with children and families traveling before Shabbat.” 

 

Credit: Olivier Fitoussi