Nine killed after van hits pedestrians in Toronto, driver in custody

Ten people were transported to the hospital with two listed as 'vital signs absent' according to CBC television.

At least one witness described the driver as appearing to deliberately target victims on his roughly kilometre-long rampage. The driver was in custody, police said.

Police in Canada's largest city initially said eight to 10 people had been injured but later said it was unclear exactly how many had been hurt or the extent of their injuries.

A Reuters witness said there were at least two bodies at the site of the incident.

A man who gave his name as Ali told CNN he saw the van and that the driver appeared to have been targeting people.

"This person was intentionally doing this, he was killing everybody," the man said. "He kept going, he kept going. People were getting hit, one after another."

"I couldn’t believe what I seen man. Everybody, all these people on the streets getting hit one by one, a post office box getting crumpled up on people and one person got dragged on and their blood is all over Young and Empress [streets]," the witness said.

He said a number of the victims were older people and at one point he saw a stroller fly into the air.

The incident occurred at lunchtime on a sunny day and the sidewalks of the mixed commercial and residential area were full of pedestrians.

Constable Jenifferjit Sidhu, a police spokeswoman, said that authorities did not know "the cause or reason for the collision."

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto said it had received seven patients from the scene.

Videos from bystanders aired on CP24, a Toronto cable news channel, appeared to show the arrest of the van driver, a balding middle aged man standing beside an extensively damaged white Ryder rental van.

He appeared to be locked in a brief standoff with the police and is pointing an object at them. Videos showed the man quickly dropping the object in his hand and being arrested.

The van was stopped about a mile south of where the episode took place, said Dan Fox, a civil servant who passed the vehicle on his way to work Monday. He said there was "significant damage to the side of the van."

Buildings and workplaces in the area were locked down, and a nearby subway station was closed and service suspended.

Police were called just before 1.30pm, local time, to the corner of Yonge Street and Finch Avenue in the north end of the city, where a van drove onto the sidewalk and hit multiple people, said Toronto Police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray.

"Everyone was running all over the place," Taeb said.

The incident happened about 30 kms from downtown, where the Group of Seven foreign ministers of industrialised nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US were meeting on Monday. There was no noticeable change in security around the Intercontinental Hotel where the ministers gathered.

A witness, Phil Zullo, told Canadian Press that he saw police arresting a man who had been driving a Ryder rental truck and saw people "strewn all over the road" where the incident occurred.

"It must have seen about five, six people being resuscitated by bystanders and by ambulance drivers," Zullo said. "It was awful. Brutal."

Video posted on Twitter showed what appeared to be police apprehending a suspect on the street at gun point.

Toronto paramedic spokeswoman Kim McKinnon said first responders were on scene treating multiple patients, but wouldn't confirm the number or severity of injuries.

Police shut down the Yonge and Finch intersection following the Monday afternoon incident and Toronto's transit agency said it has suspended service on the subway line running through the area.

The United States and Europe have seen a string of deadly attacks in which vehicles were used to mow down pedestrians, including an October 31 attack in New York that killed eight.

Reuters, New York Times, Fairfax Media, Washington Post