Toronto’s commemoration of fatal van attack to be held virtually again

An event commemorating the fourth anniversary of Toronto’s deadly van attack will be held virtually due to COVID-19.

The Yonge Street Tragedy Commemoration Committee says there will be a broadcast at 1:15 p.m. on April 23.

On that date in 2018, a 25-year-old man bent on infamy, angered by women who wouldn’t sleep with him and radicalized in the bowels of the internet deliberately drove a rented van down a busy sidewalk.

Alek Minassian killed 10 people that day, and another woman died more than three years later, never leaving the hospital.

He hurt 15 others, many of them catastrophically.

Minassian was found guilty of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 13.

The committee says people can pay their respects and leave items at Mel Lastman Square and Olive Square Park around plaques dedicated to the memory of the tragedy.

Betty Forsyth, Ji Hun Kim, So He Chung, Geraldine Brady, Chul Min Kang, Anne Marie D’Amico, Munir Najjar, Dorothy Marie Sewell, Andrea Bradden, Beutis Renuka Amarasingha and Amaresh Tesfamariam died from the attack.

Aleksandra Kozhevnikova, 92, was severely injured in the attack and died two years later.