The 25-year-old man fatally shot by police inside a Vaughan bank appeared to have explosives strapped to his body and threatened to trigger an explosion if he couldn’t speak with Donald Trump, according to witness accounts.
Nasir Labib was standing in the doorway of his Vaughan dental office at around 1 p.m. Wednesday when a customer from the RBC branch just across the plaza came looking for help.
“She was terrified. She was shaking. She was crying,” Labib told Global News Thursday.
“She said there was a young guy inside the bank, had a gun in his hand and had a belt, I think with explosives. And he wasn’t asking for money, he was asking for I believe a bag of drugs and to talk to Donald Trump.”
Labib said the woman in her 50s was traumatized after coming face to face with the gunman, who then asked a customer to give him his cell phone so he could call police.
“He asked for the drugs and to talk to Donald Trump by five o’clock or otherwise he’s going to blow everybody away,” Labib recalled.
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York Regional Police officers first on scene were able to get some employees and customers out of the bank. The SIU later said 13 hostages were in the bank at the time of the incident.
“What the lady told me he made them sit down and tied their hands, but she wasn’t tied. When I asked her, ‘How did you run away?’ She said, ‘I wasn’t tied and then he found out that my hands are free and he asked one of the tellers to tie her hands,'” Labib recalled the woman saying.
“While the teller was doing that, the alarm went off. So her and the teller managed to run out from the fire exit and that’s how we found her in front of the office here.”
By then York Regional Police officers, including members of the emergency response unit, were trying to negotiate with the suspect as about 50 children from a daycare centre just a few doors down were escorted into Labib’s dental office.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said the armed standoff with the suspect ended when two officers fatally shot the suspect. The SIU is investigating the deadly use of force.
Meanwhile, a man outside of the suspect’s home identified himself as the 25-year-old’s uncle. He said the suspect was a young child when he came to Canada from Iran with his family.
According to a Facebook profile, the suspect went to Thornhill High School before going to University.
Global News is not naming the accused since the SIU has taken charge of the investigation and has yet to identify him.
With files from Nick Westoll and Sasha Campbell
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