TORONTO — A 38-year-old Canadian man is facing murder charges after allegedly ramming a pickup truck through pedestrians in an eastern Canada town, killing two men and injuring nine people who were walking alongside a road.
Police declined to comment on a possible motive for the attack Monday afternoon in the Quebec province town of Amqui, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of Quebec City. A senior Canadian official ruled out terrorism.
An Amqui resident turned himself in immediately after the ramming and is facing murder charges, police said. He was due in court later Tuesday, provincial police Sgt. Claude Doiron said.
An initial investigation suggests the driver swerved from one side of the road to the other to hit victims chosen at random and ranging in age from less than one year to 77, Doiron said.
“We’re talking about pedestrians who were walking all along the (road), on both sides in fact, over a certain distance,” he said.
Gérald Charest, 65, and Jean Lafrenière, 73, were killed during the alleged attack.
Three of the injured were in critical condition, police said. The injured also include two children — one who is less than one year old and another who is about three — who were both seriously hurt but whose lives are not in danger.
A senior government official familiar with the matter said the incident was not terrorism or related to national security. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
“It’s unheard of crazy behavior,” Quebec Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel said. "Was it intentional? Was it a mental health issue? The investigation will tell us more.”
The city closed schools Tuesday.
“We're all trembling thinking about what happened,” Amqui Mayor Sylvie Blanchette said.
Several ambulances swarmed to the scene after the ramming took place about 3 p.m.
David Morin, a local resident, said he couldn’t get the image of one of the victims out of his head.
“He was alive when I arrived, and when I went to see another person, I came back and he was dead,” he said.
Morin said residents ran to the aid of the victims in the moments that followed. He recalled sitting next to a woman dressed in pink, and asking her name as others helped the two young children.
Regional health authorities in the Lower St-Lawrence region confirmed six of the injured were transported by plane to a Quebec City hospital.
Last month in Laval, Quebec, police said a man driving a city bus deliberately smashed into a daycare center, killing two children.
In 2021, a man used a pickup to kill four members of an immigrant family in London, Ontario, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said was a hate crime directed at Muslims.
In 2018, a man in a van rampaged through pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people. Alek Minassian was found guilty of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Minassian, 28, told police he belonged to an online community of sexually frustrated men, some of whom have plotted attacks on people who have sex.
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
