| More on this story from two days ago. |
A man opened fire at Edmonton City Hall on Tuesday, lighting “several” incendiary devices described as “Molotov cocktails” before shooting rounds from a long gun into the walls and ceiling. He was subsequently apprehended by security who detained him until the police could arrive and nobody was killed. A suspect, named as 28-year-old Bezhani Sarvar by Canada’s Globe and Mail has been charged with six counts including reckless use of a weapon, arson, and throwing explosives with intent to cause harm and appeared in court on Thursday.
Security footage of the incident shows a man carrying a rifle and wearing a security guard’s uniform walking through a City Hall corridor, opening fire, and then throwing the firearm to the ground and walking away. The newspaper cites comments of the accused man’s employer, a Canadian charity which provides security work to military and police veterans, saying the Afghan migrant was a civilian employee and had been a “good and reliable” worker to this point.
The security guard who apprehended the suspect was praised for his heroism, but he shrugged it off, saying: “‘Well sir, I was just doing my job”.
Several Canadian outlets report the alleged shooter released a manifesto before the attack, including National Post, Global News, The Toronto Sun, and Rebel News, but also note police haven’t officially confirmed their provenance yet and have generally released very little information on their investigation. Police say they are aware of the footage and are reviewing it.
Indeed, the lack of attention given to the shooting is such that the Toronto Sun complains it appears the story is being deliberately neglected or “covered up”, noting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tweeted about a hockey game on Tuesday, when one may have otherwise expected the national leader to be talking about an alleged terror attack on national soil.
The video concludes: “We need to start filtering our water, we need to watch what we are eating, we need to start eating healthy… Salaam-Alaikum, inshallah I’ll succeed with my mission, if I don’t succeed I know someone else will succeed for me.”
Suspect Bezhani Sarvar is due back in court in February.
| The very strange video. Can anyone here translate the non-English bit in the last minute? |
An alleged video of the Edmonton City Hall shooter has surfaced, where he explains the motivation for his “mission” pic.twitter.com/2s7z9ZOWfl
— YEGWAVE (@yegwave) January 24, 2024
| The Daily Mail has photos of Mr. Sarvar being entirely not peaceful, and also one of him posed in front of a warlike, Persian-style tapestry with a long gun of some sort, smoking. This may be a still from the second video he posted, according to the DM, which was also subsequently pulled from Twitter, in which he spoke entirely not in English. |