A street festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, honoring Canada’s Filipino population turned deadly Saturday evening when a driver plowed into a crowd, killing “a number of people,” according to the local police.
Police said they had taken into custody the driver, a 30-year-old man. In a news conference overnight, local officials did not give an exact answer when pressed about the number of casualties but said the number of fatalities and injured were in the “multiples.”
They did not disclose a motive, but said the driver had already been known to the police.
People were out celebrating the Lapu Lapu Day festival in the southern part of the city when the driver went into the crowd shortly after 8 p.m., the Vancouver Police Department said on social media.
Video from the local news media showed ambulances and police cars lining the roads near the festival, with emergency medical workers tending to people on the ground.
Vancouver’s mayor, Ken Sim, said he was “shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific incident.”
A spokeswoman for the Vancouver General Hospital said they had received multiple patients who were injured at the festival.
In a social media post, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said he was “devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver earlier this evening.”
“I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver,” he said. “We are all mourning with you.”
Lapu Lapu Day was officially declared on April 27, 2023, by the province of British Columbia as a testament to the legacy of Datu Lapu-Lapu, a chieftain from Mactan, Philippines, who is considered a national hero for rising up against Spanish colonizers in the early 1500s. Authorities said that up to 100,000 people had attended the festival on Saturday.
There are nearly a million Filipino immigrants and people of Filipino descent living in Canada, according to the government. The province of British Columbia is home to nearly a fifth of that number.
