Is Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»a safe city?
It’s a question many are asking after Saturday night’s deadly attack at the Lapu Lapu Day festival, where 11 people died and dozens were injured after a man drove a black Audi SUV into a crowd on East 43rd Avenue.
The answer from Mayor Ken Sim is that he understands the anger people have over what transpired Saturday night, but told reporters at a that Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»remains a safe city.
“I know many of us are fearful and feel uneasy right now,” Sim said. “But I do want to make something very clear, and I know it's hard to feel this way right now, but Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»is still a safe city.”
It was not the first time Sim made that assurance since elected mayor in October 2022.
Saturday night’s mass casualty incident was the latest in a series of high-profile violent crimes that have occurred in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»since the pandemic, where random attacks on strangers have resulted in people seriously injured or killed.
Some recent examples:
• A Toronto woman had her nose broken and suffered multiple cuts and bruises after she was attacked April 15 while walking along the seawall at Coal Harbour.
• A 92-year-old man was assaulted by multiple people and found in a Downtown Eastside alley March 18. He died of his injuries March 31.
• Two officers had their uniforms set on fire April 10 while on foot patrol in the Downtown Eastside. The attack followed a March 5 incident where an officer was slashed in his calf while in the Downtown Eastside.
• On Nov. 28, a man was sucker punched outside The Bay on West Georgia Street. The suspect was arrested and charged with other random attacks that occurred a few days earlier near the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Art Gallery and at West Pender and Granville.
• On Nov. 22, a 63-year-old man was stabbed and seriously injured by a suspected shoplifter in the Olympic Village.
• On Sept. 4, a man was killed downtown in a stabbing and another man had his hand severed in an unprovoked stranger attack.
• In September 2023, a man who was on an unescorted day pass from a psychiatric facility stabbed three people at a Chinatown festival.
'Confidence and safety'
The mayor and Police Chief Adam Palmer — who recently left the VPD to join the RCMP as an assistant commissioner — have held multiple news conferences to publicly denounce the violence and call for bail reform and involuntary care for chronic offenders living with a mental illness.
At the same time, Palmer has pointed as recently as last week to data that shows violent and property crimes are on a downward trend, with historic lows in such areas as break-ins to vehicles.
He told the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Police Board April 24 that violent crime in the first quarter of this year is down 11.3 per cent and property crime by four per cent.
Palmer has been highlighting the for several years.
“In Vancouver, sometimes when you hear about a major criminal event happening in the community, it can shake community’s confidence and safety,” the chief told the police board in June 2024.
“But the reality is, the crime trends in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»are all heading down very significantly, and the numbers are going in a really good direction. So it's good news.”
'The root cause'
But it’s the high-profile cases such as Saturday night’s mass casualty event — which Deputy Chief Steve Rai described as the darkest day in the city’s history — that get the public’s attention.
In this case, the tragedy garnered international media coverage.
The community’s confidence and safety is what Sim and Rai attempted to address Sunday at a city hall news conference. Both Sim and Rai pointed to senior governments to fill gaps in the justice and mental health systems to prevent further random attacks.
“We’ve got to get to the root cause,” said Rai, who is now the VPD’s interim chief until the police board selects a new leader for the department.
“We’ve got to get people help. And it's not putting more cops on the street. Certainly, we're crime fighters — we're not health-care fighters. So we need something at the back end, and those are other areas of responsibility, not the police’s.”
Rai’s comments came after he said the 30-year-old suspect in the deadly attack had a significant history of interactions with police and health-care professionals related to his mental health.
The suspect had an interaction with police in another jurisdiction the day before the attack, but the VPD has said it wasn’t criminal in nature. The department declined to provide further details.
Police announced that Crown counsel has approved eight charges of second-degree murder against Kai-Ji Adam Lo, with further charges anticipated as the investigation continues.
Whether mental illness triggered the attack is not something police would confirm.
'Respectful treatment'
Jonny Morris, CEO of the B.C. division of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), said Saturday night’s tragedy has shaken him and his staff “deeply to the core.” Morris warned that citizens should not reach a conclusion about the motive for the attack until established by investigators.
“There's a whole bunch of harm that happens when broad statements go out there around people with mental illness being violent,” he said.
At the same time, Morris said, a person living with a mental illness who commits a crime needs to be held accountable by the justice system. A check of the online B.C. court registry shows no prior charges or convictions for the suspect in Saturday’s crime.
“And when individuals are unwell, they deserve respectful treatment and access to funded mental health services,” he said. “So we need to hold all of these things together.”
Morris said the tragedy can serve as a “watershed moment” to improve and strengthen systems of care to prevent further tragedies, knowing full well what appears to be the random nature of the deadly attack at the festival.
'Ground ourselves in the facts'
Asked about the CMHA’s position on involuntary care, Morris said voluntary systems of care need to be first improved. It’s also important, he said, to recognize and not conflate chronic offenders living with a mental illness with a person seeking or needing treatment who has had no interactions with police.
“You have people across this province living with a range of mental illnesses, and the majority of those folks never go on to do anything remotely violent whatsoever,” he said. “They’re actually more likely to be a victim of violence themselves.”
Morris said he has always felt safe in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»and commended the mayor and police department for bringing context to the state of crime in the city. Tragedies such as Saturday’s night attack can leave people with a sense that “there’s chaos everywhere,” he said.
“It's really important to underscore that people will have questions around safety and concerns because this event is core shaking, it's world shaking, it's devastating,” he said before again emphasizing his point about people living with a mental illness.
“It is important to ground ourselves in the facts that the vast majority of people living with any kind of mental illness are never violent, and in a city like this, the majority of us experience strong, strong experiences of safety.”
'This has changed all of us'
Sgt. Steve Addison, a VPD media relations officer, said Monday that eight of the 11 victims were women, one was a five-year-old girl and two others were men. Ten lived in Metro Vancouver, with police still determining the hometown of one person.
Seven people are in critical condition and three in serious condition, said Addison, noting some of the injured had been treated and released from hospital. Others may have been injured at the scene but sought treatment on their own.
Addison said the department will at some point release the names of all the victims, although some are being posted on social media.
“We will never be normal again,” said Addison, noting the toll on the Filipino community and all those affected by what he described as an unprecedented crime for Vancouver. “This has changed all of us.”
He reiterated what Palmer and others have said about Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»being a safe city.
“Incidents like this are absolutely tragic — they're horrible, they cause people fear, they strike us to our core,” Addison said. “We're a major city. You will not find a major city anywhere in the world that has been able to completely eliminate crime and violence. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»is a safe city.”
Added Addison: “It’s hard to predict the unpredictable.”
'Come out stronger'
RJ Aquino, chair of Filipino BC, which organized the Lapu Lapu Day festival, said the Filipino community is still reeling from Saturday night’s tragedy. Aquino said the festival started out as a celebratory weekend for family and friends to reconnect with community.
“Throughout the day, the crowds just grew and grew, and you could just feel the vibe,” he said Monday, standing in a parking lot a few blocks from the crime scene. “It was such a good time, and then the tragedy.”
Aquino said the focus over the past two days has been to help people heal and ensure they get the support they need. Last year’s festival, he said, went off “without a hitch,” so there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t run smoothly over the weekend.
“Every city has its dark moments,” he said, when asked whether he believes Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»is a safe city.
“You can't dispute how horrific and tragic this is. But it's really not symbolic or emblematic of my experience here and millions of others. This is now an opportunity for everybody to show how we overcome this, how resilient we can be, how we can come together and work through this and come out stronger.”
Assault victim
Janette Wee, a school teacher who works at an elementary school in the neighbourhood, visited the growing memorial of flowers Monday at East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street. Wee is of Chinese descent, but originally from the Philippines.
“It's a very emotional situation right now, and I just want to be here for the people who don't have a say anymore, and to show the kindness that we need in our city right now,” she said, noting she no longer feels safe in Vancouver, having been attacked last year by a man armed with a weapon.
Wee said her assailant has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was released from custody 22 days after being arrested. She supports rehabilitation of people but, in her case, the health-care system is not working for the man who attacked her.
“I think it should be mandatory for him,” she said. “If the person can't take care of himself, where is the rehabilitation process? Who's going to be responsible for his life? Is it the government? Is it himself? Is it his family?”
'Want justice to happen'
At the same memorial, Jacob Martinez stood in prayer.
“I'm Filipino and it's especially personal,” said Martinez, before he caught a bus back to his residence in Burnaby. “The fact that it happened to my own people, I just want justice to happen.”
His family thought he might be among the victims.
“I was at a different event and my phone battery died, so they thought I was one of the people who was killed,” he said, adding that Saturday night’s tragedy has sharpened his concerns for his safety when in public.
“I'm worried that it could literally happen every single time I cross the street. It’s scary, especially in downtown, there's a lot of people. What if someone just drives like 100 miles per hour into everyone crossing there?”
Police have set up for anyone who has video of Saturday night’s crime. More than 100 police officers continue to work on the investigation.
Police executed a search warrant at Lo’s residence Sunday in east Vancouver. Police confirmed Monday that Lo is the brother of Alexander Lo, who was murdered in January 2024.
