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.
Three of the injured were in critical condition, provincial police spokeswoman Sgt. Hélène St-Pierre said.
An Amqui resident turned himself into police immediately after the crash, and was facing murder charges, St-Pierre said. “For now, the investigation tends to show that the collision was a voluntary act,” she said.
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.
Several ambulances swarmed to the scene after the ramming took place about 3 p.m.
Truck driver Alain Gilbert said he was driving into Amqui when an ambulance raced past him before almost immediately pulling over to attend to a person lying on the sidewalk. As he drove, Gilbert saw more ambulances and more people on the ground — about four or possibly five people spread over a distance of about 500 meters (yards), he said.
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.
