A driver ran over a group of party attendees who attended a Filipina Street Festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver on Saturday night, killing “several people”, according to local authorities.
Vancouver police said they were investigating a “Massass Casale incident” at a Lapu Lapu Day festival after “several people were killed and other wounds.” Police said they had a driver’s tasks, a 30 -year -old Vancouver man.
“Approximately at 8:14 pm on April 26, a man led to a large multitude of people attending the Lapu Lapu Festival near East 43rd Avenue and Fraser Street,” Vancouver police said in a publication on social networks. The festival celebrates Datu Lapu-Lapu, a national hero in the Philippines.
Vancouver police said in an email on Sunday that investigators had ruled out terrorism as a reason, but they offered no more details.
In a press conference, Steve Rai, the chief of the interim police, was not specific to murdered and injured, saying that they were several victims. A spokeswoman for Vancouver General Hospital said they had received multiple patients who were injured at the festival.
Mr. Rai did not approach a possible reason for the incident, but said the driver had the leg known by the police. The members of the crowd had submitted the man before the police arrived at the scene, police said.
The fatal incident occurred less than 48 hours before federal elections were produced in Canada. When journalists asked if the incident was related to the elections, Mr. Rai said: “I don’t know anything about that.”
Canada’s Prime Minister of Canada said in a publication on social networks that he was “devastated to hear about the horrible events at the Lapu Lapu Festival in Vancouver earlier this night.”
“I sacrifice my deepest condolences to the loved ones of the murdered and killed, to the Canadian Philippine community and all in Vancouver,” he said. “We are all mourning with you.”
The mayor of Vancouver, Ken Sim, said he was “shocked and deeply sad by the horrible incident.”
Vancouver is proud to be a diverse and multicultural city, with more than half or its Idens residents that are identified as a “visible minority”, according to the 2021 census data.
Lapu-Lapu’s day is an annual celebration in the Philippines, which marks the memory of Datu Lapu-Lapu, which faced Spanish colonization. The festival was an officer established in Vancouver in 2023.
