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Henry Yang, who was making a U-turn in his Volvo SUV on Yonge to head southbound, first heard the sounds of the van hitting mailboxes and bus stop signs.

“The moment he hit a fire hydrant, I knew,” Yang said. He began honking his horn, trying to warn people. “Right away, he hit someone,” he said, and “he just kept on going.”

Photo by linkedin.com

He was about 20 to 30 metres behind the van, and at one point, he said, as traffic grew heavier, the van pulled off the sidewalk and veered into incoming cars heading north.

“He hit a pedestrian who was crossing the road,” Yang said, horror still in his voice. “He flew in the air.”

At this point, Yang had rolled down his window so he could yell at people as well as try to distract the driver.

“He went back onto the sidewalk,” he said. “He was zigzagging, hitting people, bodies being lifted, there was blood bursting from them. It was horrible.”

He said he had no doubt what the driver was doing was intentional.

Neither Toronto Police, the RCMP nor federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale had any comment on the alleged motive of the driver, who was arrested quietly and without incident, despite him taking a shooter-style stance, begging police to “shoot me” and threatening that he had a gun in his pocket.

Despite those threats, the man was taken into custody without a whisper of force by a uniformed constable who demonstrated remarkable sangfroid, once even returning to his cruiser to turn off the siren, apparently trying to calm down the man.