It was a warm, sunny day in Toronto, the first good weather after a wet and cold April. Throngs of people spilled onto the street from the offices and apartments that flank Yonge Street in North York. They were a typical Toronto mix of backgrounds. They were students, mothers pushing strollers, seniors with walkers and executives in suits. Some were out for coffee or lunch. Others were going to the bank or hurrying back to work. Many were on Yonge at that moment through mere chance. What they were about to experience was unlike anything Canada had seen before. Just before 1:30 p.m. on April 23, a white van started moving south on Yonge, just north of Finch Avenue. When it came to rest seven minutes later, 10 people were dead and 16 more hurt. Scores more witnessed the carnage. In the days after the attack, Globe and Mail reporters interviewed dozens of witnesses, as well as family members, friends and colleagues of the victims to tell the story of what happened that day.

Open this photo in gallery An illustration of the 10 victims of the van attack in Toronto on Monday, April 23, 2018. Back, from left: Anne Marie D'Amico, Dorothy Sewell and Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Forsyth. Middle row, from left: Geraldine Brady, Chul Min (Eddie) Kang, So He Chung and Ji Hun Kim. Front, from left: Beutis Renuka Amarasingha, Munir Najjar and Andrea Bradden. Heather Buchanan

Open this photo in gallery Chul Min (Eddie) Kang Heather Buchanan

Shanna Han was looking out the window when the white van raced past the Yonge St. vape store where she works, just south of Finch. She watched a young man get hit by the van and collapse to the sidewalk from the impact. Chul Min Kang, Eddie to his friends, was still breathing when she got to him. She ran back into the store to grab paper towels and T-shirts to put under his head. She retrieved his shoes that had been knocked off by the impact, imagining he’d want to take those with him to the hospital. Picking up his cellphone off the ground, she began to call his contacts. “Are you a friend of Eddie?” she asked. “Do you know Eddie?”

Ms. Han sensed he was funny from his smile in his phone screensaver picture, which was of Mr. Kang and his wife, who had recently come to visit him from their home country of South Korea, where she teaches. The two live apart. Mr. Kang immigrated decades ago and attended Mohawk College in Hamilton in the 1990s. He eventually began working in the restaurant business.

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The night before, he’d worked late at the downtown location of the Copacabana Steakhouse, where he was a chef. He was testing out different salt rubs. Mr. Kang was passionate about food and flavours and, at 45, acted like a friendly father figure to younger kitchen staff.

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When Ms. Han returned to his side, Mr. Kang had stopped breathing. She talked to him and told him help was coming, felt bad that she’d left him and took his hand. She was holding it when paramedics pronounced Mr. Kang dead. His phone started ringing. Ms. Han didn’t answer. She didn’t want to hear a voice and explain to them what had happened.

Open this photo in gallery Dorothy Sewell Heather Buchanan

Close by, Dorothy Sewell, 80, was alone on an errand to the bank. She had a car, but preferred to walk. “Nan” to her grandkids, whom she made a point of calling every birthday, holiday and even Canada Day, Ms. Sewell liked to stay active. Growing up in Toronto, she found a job at Sears, starting in sales and working her way to a management position before she retired. A widow, she lived alone in recent years at an apartment just off Yonge on Ellerslie. Ms. Sewell volunteered at a soup kitchen and as a buddy for lonely seniors and also played in a bowling league. It was a big week ahead for one of her favourite sports teams. The Maple Leafs would play Game 6 that night in a bid to tie their playoff series against the Boston Bruins. She was a fan of the Blue Jays, too, taking in a game last May at the Rogers Centre with her grandson, his wife and their three kids when they came to visit from Kamloops. There’s a picture of them in the stands, Ms. Sewell is on the end, beaming.

She didn’t die alone. Roula Massin was on her way back to work at the Toronto District School Board. She didn’t see the van but heard screams. Ms. Massin thought the scene around her must be what a warzone looks like. There were four bodies on the ground. There was a lot of blood and broken bones. Shoes and purses were strewn across the sidewalk. Ms. Massin was trained in CPR, a skill she updated as part of her job as an administrator with the school board. Amid the chaos, she worked with another passerby, trying to revive a woman who was unconscious on the sidewalk. She then took her hand and said a prayer for Ms. Sewell as she stopped breathing.

Open this photo in gallery Geraldine Brady Heather Buchanan

On that afternoon, Geraldine Brady wasn’t far from her Willowdale home. The 83-year-old widow was a cancer survivor. She’d undergone surgeries for jaw reconstruction. Her neighbor Lilana Keltz admired her resilience. They’d lived near each other for years and both ran errands on Yonge Street. Ms. Brady, who used to sell cosmetics, was always waving and saying hello as she passed by during her walks. She never made it home that day.

South of Parkview Avenue, Amir Farokhpour was just popping out for lunch. The 28-year-old aspiring photographer was at his job at a Yonge Street furniture store.

When he opened the door and stepped outside, the white van was metres away being driven erratically south. The driver veered into the northbound lanes and smashed into a man walking across Yonge Street. The sound of the bang stuck in Mr. Farokhpour’s mind. He registered how fast the van was going and watched as it swerved toward the sidewalk, where two women were walking.

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The driver didn’t mount the sidewalk there and raced off to the south, still on the wrong side of the road. The man it hit was left lying in the curb lane.

Along with the two women, Mr. Farokhpour tried to help him. They talked to him. He did not respond. Looking at the man, Mr. Farokhpour thought he was killed on impact.

Not far away, Shunying Li had just returned home from a trip to the bank. Outside the window of her seniors residence, she heard a loud bang. The 71-year-old rode the elevator down to the lobby and stepped out to the sidewalk to see what was going on.

A few metres up the road a body was lying on the sidewalk. She approached cautiously and was surprised to recognize the person on the ground: Betty Forsyth, 94, a woman she knew from around the building as a strong and independent person who daily toured the neighbourhood with the help of her walker. Ms. Li, originally from Shanghai, does not speak English and was unsure of herself. She could see others springing to action, but she held back, not knowing how she could help.

Open this photo in gallery Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Forsyth Heather Buchanan

Ms. Forsyth’s eyes were open and unfocused, staring off in the distance, and she lay on her side, very still. Another man from the building was also hurt, and it occurred to Ms. Li that this must be some kind of terrorist attack. Eventually, paramedics came and loaded Ms. Forsyth into an ambulance. A police escort rushed her to hospital. Ms. Li watched as the building superintendent collected Ms. Forsyth’s walker and shoes and brought them inside.

Andy Mearns, 85, had been chatting with the superintendent when the van hit his friend, Ms. Forsyth. He was looking forward to lunch, deciding whether to order Hawaiian or pepperoni pizza, when he saw people running up and down the sidewalk outside yelling and screaming. He and the superintendent went outside. The van had already passed. He saw Ms. Forsyth lying on the sidewalk. Mr. Mearns did not want to go near her body. He decided to remember her as she lived, as a lucky lady who seemed always to win on casino night, who was unbowed by her surgeries. He felt numb. He stood standing, watching, wondering how someone could do such a thing. Then he went back inside.

On the day of the attack, Dainis Cevers wasn’t supposed to be at work. The 22-year-old, a cook at a nearby restaurant, was booked to have the day off. He was at work only to help out. While he was there, he got a call to pick up his little brother who was undergoing an outpatient procedure at North York General Hospital. He lingered at the restaurant just long enough to wrap up what he was doing, a delay that put him squarely in the middle of the van attack.

Sometime before 1:30, Mr. Cevers left the St. Louis Bar and Grill at Yonge and Church Avenue. He was barely 200 metres from work, driving south in his white Hyundai Sonata, when another white vehicle appeared out of nowhere, moving fast. From there, everything happened in an instant.

The rental van cut in front of Mr. Cevers, crossed the yellow centre line and accelerated at a man walking east across Yonge, by Parkview. The man was hit hard. He was knocked out of his shoes, and his glasses went flying. He was thrown higher than the van that hit him before tumbling back to earth.

By the time Mr. Cevers was able to stop his own vehicle, the van was disappearing down Yonge, heading south in the northbound lanes. Along with a passerby, he raced to help the man, but the victim was lying perfectly still.

Leaving the passerby to tend to him, Mr. Cevers carried on to the hospital and picked up his brother. He came back later to talk to police. When relatives of the victim came to the restaurant later in the week, asking him about the incident, he didn’t know what to tell them. All he wanted to say was, remember him the way he lived.

That afternoon, Morgan McDougall was walking with a woman he’d just met in person for the first time. They were planning on getting something to eat. Mr. McDougall thinks he suggested pancakes.

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Something – maybe tires screeching or a scream - made him turn around. He saw a white van bearing down on him. He threw his hands up in front of his face.

He was knocked unconscious and came to moments later. The woman he’d been walking with was on the ground, not moving. He saw another person – a woman, he thinks − on the ground nearby.

Confused and angry, he tried to jump to his feet. He remembers a policeman and a paramedic were there, crouching over him and telling him to calm down. He saw the area was cordoned off. He realized something disastrous had happened.

He was bustled into an ambulance. He called his mother to tell her he was okay.

‘How did I get hit by a car’



Rob Greco was driving south along Yonge Street, heading for an appointment at 4900 Yonge. He was running about 10 minutes early, so as he approached the intersection at Empress Avenue, he turned his attention toward a massive office complex on the corner. His old fishing buddy Carlo was in charge of maintenance at that building, so he figured if he spotted his friend out front, he might pull over to chat for a few minutes.

Just as he entered the intersection, he heard the roar of an engine behind him. A split-second later, a white van jumped up onto the sidewalk. The revving of the engine continued, followed by a sickening sound. Thump. Thump. Thump. He saw bodies flying. He pulled over, grabbed the cellphone off his dashboard to call 911. He looked at the time: 1:26 p.m.

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Getting out of his car, he watched the van heading toward a young woman on the sidewalk. She had long brown hair and was dressed in a red shirt and black tights. The van hit her.

The next thing he knew, he was on his knees on the ground beside her, holding her hand. Around them, he could see others who had been hit lying on the sidewalk. A tall, skinny man was pacing back and forth, talking to himself. “Holy fuck, I can’t believe I got hit by a car,” he heard the man say. “How did I get hit by a car?”

Mr. Greco stayed crouched beside the young woman, hoping desperately that help would come soon. She was still breathing, and her eyes were open. He kept reassuring her that help was on the way.

Open this photo in gallery Anne Marie D'Amico Heather Buchanan

He heard one passerby refer to her as “Anne Marie,” but it wouldn’t be until much later that he learned her full name: Anne Marie D’Amico. She was 30 years old and worked at an investment firm in the gleaming 23-storey building at 5140 Yonge. Friends and family would remember her as a generous young woman who loved to travel and volunteer.

Twelve minutes later, at 1:38 p.m., paramedics arrived. Mr. Greco and others hoisted the young woman up onto a stretcher. The next day, he learned that she had been one of ten killed that day.

On Monday, Maria Hacker would have normally walked the four blocks to the passport office, but an intense pain had flared up in her back. Taking the bus seemed wiser than shuffling down busy Yonge Street. The 90-year-old’s passport was set to expire and she had hopes of visiting old friends in Germany or her native Hungary one day.

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As she approached her destination, she watched an older woman rush to catch the bus. Before the bus came to a stop, a white van tore down the sidewalk, hit the woman and sped off.

People started flooding the area. Multiple sirens soon drew Ms. Hacker’s attention north. She wondered why so many ambulances and police cruisers were responding to a single pedestrian’s death.

She decided to take the subway home. It was closed, so she walked. Within three blocks she saw three bodies covered with orange tarps.

When she finally arrived at her supportive housing complex, a crowd of 20 neighbours were gathered outside. She spotted Mary Hunt among them, stricken and sobbing. Their friend Ms. Forsyth, was dead.

Open this photo in gallery Andrea Bradden Heather Buchanan

Earlier, Michele Kelman, an IT worker, was on her way back from getting coffee with her friend Andrea Bradden, 33, after a lunch at Jack Astor’s. They were walking past Mel Lastman square when they heard the sound of a commotion, of screaming, of things being smashed. Ms. Kelman turned around and saw the van right behind them, speeding in their direction. It was coming down the sidewalk and bodies and other things in its path were being sent flying through the air. There was no time to run. She thought, “This is it, I’m done”.

She turned to her right protectively. When she looked back a second later Ms. Bradden, also an employee at Gartner Canada, an IT research consultancy company, was gone. Ms. Bradden, whose maiden name was Knafelc, had grown up in Caledon East, north of Toronto. She graduated from Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in 2003 and a bachelor degree in psychology from York University in 2008.

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Ms. Kelman tried to find her friend but couldn’t. Maybe she ran, maybe’s she ok and somewhere safe, she thought. Why did they get coffee?, she asked herself. They would have already been back at the office. When she finally found Ms. Bradden she wasn’t moving. She was badly hurt. People were giving her CPR and trying to bring her back. They couldn’t.

Open this photo in gallery Munir Najjar Heather Buchanan

Munir Najjar, 85, was out enjoying the sunshine. A Jordanian citizen, he had been in Canada with his wife Lillian for about a month visiting their son, daughter and grandchildren and had experienced the worst type of Canadian spring. On the Facebook page they shared, the couple documented their visit. Ice cream in Unionville at Easter. A blast of snow weeks later. But this day was perfect for a walk. The forecast was looking promising for next week, too. Mr. Najjar had lunch plans with a friend. He was on a walk when he was killed by the van.

In his usual window seat at Starbucks, Peter Douchanov was sipping a double-long espresso when he saw the white van. A project manager in the city’s finance department, he had considered taking his coffee outside and having it in busy Mel Lastman Square before heading back to the office. That might have put him right in the van’s path. Instead he stayed to finish reading a BBC article on his phone.

The van mounted the curb onto the sidewalk and stopped for a second or two. His first thought was that the driver might have collapsed from some medical crisis. Then he heard screams. The van drove down the sidewalk at a measured pace. “He would accelerate and slow down; accelerate, slow down.”

Mr. Douchanov saw three or four people hit, predominantly women, he thinks − though it all happened so fast he can’t be sure. He watched the van continue up the sidewalk, speeding up when it reached the school-board building. A couple of men ran behind, chasing it. But it sped up, crossing North York Boulevard and continuing up Yonge along the sidewalk.

Mr. Douchanov watched as people swarmed the square to aid the victims and give CPR. He couldn’t handle getting any closer. He stayed in the Starbucks, hypnotized by the scene outside. The coffee shop was chaotic. Many people were calling 911. At one point, Mr. Douchanov saw the paramedics rushing northbound on Yonge Street, away from the scene. He was confused about where they were going, but now knows they were headed to Yonge and Finch, where more people had been hit.

When he returned to his office, a colleague said she’d heard there had been a car accident. Mr. Douchanov broke down.

Early in the morning, Jalal Faghihi was looking for passengers. He’d started taking Uber requests around 8:15 a.m. after dropping his eight-year-old son at school. He’d just dropped a passenger off at Pearson International Airport around 12:30 p.m. He had waited 20 minutes or so and no requests arrived. He got back on the 401 in his Dodge Caravan and exited at Yonge Street. He lived in North York and knew there would be more people looking for rides near Finch Avenue.

He was passing the Loblaws grocery at Empress Ave when he saw a white Ryder van, driving south on the other side of the street. He watched it pull on to the sidewalk and hit people.

“What is this guy doing?” he said to himself as he pulled over. The van hit four or five more people.

Getting out, Mr. Faghihi went over to an older woman who had been hit. He called 911 as another bystander, a doctor, tried to perform CPR. Two minutes later she was dead.

Mr. Faghihi waited to give his statement to police. His van was trapped by yellow tape so at 8 p.m. he walked up to Finch subway station. A fare collector allowed him into the TTC without paying. He had left his wallet in his minivan.

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A child’s stroller on its side

School trustee Chris Moise was just returning from a lunchtime workout, his routine three times a week. He had a meeting at the Yonge Street headquarters of the Toronto District School Board. One of his duties as a trustee is to sit on a panel that determines what to do with students recommended for expulsion.

It was to convene at 1:30.

He was putting his gym bag away when a staffer yelled, “Oh my God.” Mr. Moise looked out the window and saw the white van driving down the sidewalk, chased by people on foot. He ran out into the street. The first thing he saw was a child’s stroller lying on its side. A woman held a baby to her chest. “Are you okay?” Mr. Moise asked. She just stared at him.

Two people were lying unconscious on the sidewalk, their limbs at odd angles as if broken. One of them, a middle-aged white woman, had deep gashes on her abdomen.

Another woman lay face down nearby. Bits of the salad she had been carrying in a plastic container were scattered on and around her. Mr. Moise found her pulse. He turned her over onto her back with the help of a woman from the school-board security detail, then held her neck stationary as the security guard did chest compressions.

Two police cruisers sped past, heading south on Yonge Street the way the van had gone. Mr. Moise, a former cop, started directing traffic so that emergency workers could get to the victims. A fire truck arrived. He waved it toward the woman he had helped. As he went back inside the building, he noticed blood on the shoulder of his sky-blue blazer.

That day, Tiffany Jefkins was sick of being stuck inside. She met a friend to have lunch with their young kids at the food court of the North York Civic Centre. They got their usual – barbacoa beef burritos – and took them outside for a picnic in Mel Lastman Square.

They sat on the grass 20 metres away from Yonge Street. The kids, including Ms. Jefkins’s 10-month-old, Eleanor, munched on grapes. They had just stood up to leave when they watched the white van mount the sidewalk, hit four people, then swing back onto the road. Ms. Jefkins is a certified first-aid instructor who helps run a small CPR-training business. She buckled Eleanor in her stroller, asked her friend to watch the child, grabbed her keychain − with a small folded CPR mask attached − and darted toward the victims.

She turned over the victim closest to her and checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. And because of the victim’s injuries, the CPR mask wouldn’t work. So she began to administer chest compressions, simultaneously giving advice to a nearby man who was putting pressure on another victim’s wound. Aside from him, no one from the growing crowd offered to help. Ms. Jefkins, 33, researches the bystander effect, a phenomenon in which people, in the presence of others, avoid getting involved in an emergency situation. She plans to investigate it in graduate school next fall - a coincidence she couldn’t help but note as she begged the crowd to step up.

Eventually, a volunteer emerged to perform compressions on the second victim. Then, another came forward, taking over for Ms. Jefkins as she ran to the third victim, starting the resuscitation procedure again. Someone dumped a first-aid kit on the ground. A woman showed up with an armload of gauze. It wasn’t until after Ms. Jefkins coached bystanders through assisting a fourth victim that security officials from nearby buildings began to emerge, bringing heart-shocking automated external defibrillators.

She was running from victim to victim to victim to victim, making sure they were getting effective treatment and showing bystanders how to use the defibrillators, when emergency crews arrived and began to take over.

Ms. Jefkins paused. She had done all she could do. She found her daughter and friend and left for home. Soon, she realized she’d dropped her keys in the midst of the chaos. They were logged as potential evidence and kept by police. When Ms. Jefkins finally saw an aerial photo of the scene, all four bodies were covered in orange tarps.

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Open this photo in gallery Beutis Renuka Amarasingha Heather Buchanan

A single mother, Beutis Renuka Amarasingha was heading for the subway. The 45-year-old needed to get across the city to Scarborough to pick up her son from his elementary school. The commute home would take nearly an hour. She’d just finished her shift at Earl Haig Secondary School, spending the morning on her feet as a cafeteria worker. It was a job she’d done for three years after graduating as an adult student from the Toronto District School Board. She’d worked at many schools, but had just started at the North York high school, just a few blocks east from North York Centre subway station. The job paid the rent of the basement apartment she shared with Diyon, 7, and allowed her to send some money back to her family in Sri Lanka. She’d just returned a few days earlier from a three-week-long visit home to see her mother and was jet-lagged Sunday night as she and Diyon celebrated the Sri Lankan New Year at the Toronto Maha Vihara Buddhist Centre. The temple was a fixture in her life. It was also Diyon’s Sunday school. When friends called her cellphone to ask why Ms. Amarasingha hadn’t picked up Diyon, there was no answer. Officials had declared Ms. Amarasingha dead.

Toronto Police Constable Ken Lam was on his way to help, brought to Yonge Street by all those calls to 911. Nearby, two young students were dying.

Open this photo in gallery So He Chung Heather Buchanan

So He Chung was 22. She’d gone to the same high school, Loretto Abbey Catholic Secondary School, as Ms. D’Amico. At the University of Toronto she was studying molecular biology, on top of working as a sales specialist at Holt Renfrew. Ji Hun Kim was also 22. She was studying at Seneca College.

Ambulances and fire trucks were flooding the area.

Constable Lam stopped in the middle of the street, parallel to the white van that had finally stopped on the sidewalk. The front was crumpled. It had hit more than two dozen people. The driver, a bald man, told Mr. Lam to kill him. “Shoot me. Kill me. I have a gun in my pocket.”

“I don’t care,” Const. Lam yelled. “Get down.”

Three employees from a nearby financial firm, who weren’t aware of what was happening on the street, were on their way back from a food court in the Emerald Park condos, at Yonge Street and Poyntz Avenue, when they found themselves in the middle of a police takedown. They’d stepped right up to the van, not realizing that traffic had stopped. The man from the van was holding up a small, black, square-ish thing – maybe a wallet or a smartphone. But the men didn’t feel a sense of emergency. Whatever this was, they couldn’t imagine it was dangerous. This was Canada, after all.

Open this photo in gallery Ji Hun Kim Heather Buchanan

Constable Lam, the worker thought, must have noticed him and his colleagues: when they came into view, the officer seemed to emerge from behind the car and move in the other direction, almost as if to distract the man and let them escape. They noticed he had his gun in his hand as they rounded the corner of the building, near a Sheppard-Yonge TTC station entrance. The trio hid for the next few seconds. They heard the officer tell the man to get down again. They did not see him trade his gun for a baton. When they heard the officer tell the man to put his hands behind his head, they peeked out to see him be handcuffed.

They hurried back to their office. They started to eat their lunch and went online to see what the man had done. They read early reports that an unknown number of pedestrians along Yonge Street had been hit by a van. That’s when the shock hit.

After the events of that afternoon, Alek Minassian, 25, was been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Toronto Police expect to charge him with three more cases of attempted murder.

Reported by Marcus Gee, Ann Hui, Josh O’Kane, Wendy Stueck, Oliver Moore, Mike Hager, Joe Friesen, Molly Hayes, Ian Bailey, Tu Thanh Ha, Denise Balkissoon, Andrea Woo, Sunny Dhillon, Caroline Alphonso, Jana G. Pruden, Simona Chiose, Stephanie Chambers, Rick Cash, Hannah Daley, Heather Norman, Jennifer La Grassa