‘This is the day of retribution’: Accused van killer’s chilling police interview released

Warning: The video and story below contain disturbing content.

Editor’s note: 680 NEWS and CityNews have decided not to publish the entire video of the interview between Toronto police and Alek Minassian. This decision has been done with careful consideration of the potential impact of what publishing the entire video could have had on the victims’ families and friends. Instead, we chose to publish portions of the video as part of the larger story about what seemed to have motivated the accused.

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After eight hours of restful sleep, Alek Minassian woke up around 7 a.m. on the morning of April 23, 2018, had breakfast, brushed his teeth, and ventured out to pick up the van he had rented. Just days prior, the 25-year-old completed his final exams at Seneca College. But instead of becoming a computer programmer, he would soon become one of Toronto’s most notorious accused mass murderers.

After signing some obligatory paperwork, Minassian jumped behind the wheel of the van and headed towards Yonge Street.

“I’m thinking that this is it, this is the day of retribution … and then as soon as I saw there was pedestrians, I just decided to go for it.”

“I floor the pedal.”

Those chilling words were uttered by Minassian just hours after the van attack that killed 10 and injured 16 along a busy stretch of Yonge Street in North York over a year ago.

On Friday morning, a publication ban was lifted on the statement Minassian gave police after his dramatic arrest, providing a disturbing glimpse into what may have inspired him to allegedly get behind the wheel of a rented van and plough down innocent civilians.

As Minassian coolly explained to Senior Detective Rob Thomas in a nearly four-hour long interview, it was a growing resentment towards women — fuelled by like-minded individuals on the dark recesses of the internet — that spawned the attack he’s accused of carrying out.

Minassian told Thomas he was “kind of a nerd in high school” but said he was treated well by other students. He got along with his family and said his parents were supportive.

But when he went to college to study software development, he began to develop a growing resentment towards women.

Incel rebellion

Minassian described what he called a humiliating “defining moment” when he attended a Halloween house party in 2013.

“I walked in and attempted to socialize with some girls, however they all laughed at me and held the arms of the big guys instead.”

“I felt very angry,” he explained.

Minassian, who described himself as “ultraconservative” and a “hardcore gamer” soon found a community of sympathizers on online chat boards like 4chan and Reddit.

When he wasn’t playing violent video-games up to five hours a day to “let out all my urges,” he was often chatting about his sexual frustrations from his laptop at home or at the library computer at Seneca.

He joined a sub-Reddit called “Forever Alone,” where he learned about and began to identify with the incel community — a term that stands for “involuntarily celibate.”

It’s also where he claims he began chatting with two other incels, Elliot Rodger and Chris Harper Mercer, both of whom went on to commit mass killings that ended in their respective suicides.

“We discussed our frustrations at society and being unable to get laid and we were plotting certain timed strikes,” Minassian explained.

When 22-year-old Rodger killed six people and injured more than a dozen others near the University of California in 2014, Minassian said he was inspired, calling Rodger the “founding forefather,” of the incel rebellion — a plan to eliminate alpha males so incels could reproduce with attractive women.

“It’s basically a movement of angry incels, such as myself, who are unable to get laid, therefore we want to overthrow the Chads (alpha males).”

Minassian says he last spoke to Rodger just days before the California attack.

“He told me he has to go, he’s on a very important mission and he might not make it back alive,” Minassian told Thomas. “I felt kind of proud of him for his acts of bravery.”

“I started to feel radicalized at that time,” he continued. “Meaning I felt it was time to take action and not just sit on the sidelines and just fester in my own sadness.”

Minassian said Rodgers’ killing spree prompted him to take action.

“I was at Seneca College and I decided to phone Ryder and book either a truck or a van with them and they had a 10-foot van available … so I figured that this is perfect … it’s big enough to have an effect but not too big that I can’t maneuver with it, so the van was the perfect medium sized to use as my weapon,” he said.

“I was thinking that I would inspire future masses to join me in my uprising as well.”

Before allegedly committing the deadly attack, Minassian said he shared his plans on 4chan, and posted a final Facebook message, stating that the incel rebellion has already begun

“Quite a few people were congratulating me because I suspect they probably knew what I meant by what I said,” he explained.

Minassian, who will face a judge-only trial starting in February, went on to describe using the van as a weapon to strike civilians, saying he only stopped when a drink splashed on the van’s windshield, obstructing his vision.

“I wanted to do more but I’ve kind of been foiled by a lack of visibility,” he said.

He added that he was hoping to die by police gunfire, but said an officer didn’t shoot when he pulled out his wallet as though it was a gun.

“Not the usual everyday experience,” he concluded.

“I’m feeling good.”