On October 20, 2014, Martin Couture-Rouleau deliberately ran into two Canadian Armed Forces soldiers with his car in a shopping center parking lot in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, killing one soldier and injuring another. Couture-Rouleau was killed by police after he rolled his car while trying to escape.
Two days later, on October 22, 2014, a series of shootings took place in Ottawa, Canada. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32 year old Canadian, shot and killed a soldier on ceremonial guard duty, and shot at and missed two other guards. Zehaf-Bibeau then went to the Canadian parliament building, where he shot a guard in the foot during a struggle. He was shot and killed by Kevin Vickers, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons.
Stephen Harper. Photo by World Economic Forum – Remy Steinegger [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
The Canadian government was quick to call both events acts of terrorism. Prime Minister Stephen Harper
referred to the October 20 incident as an ISIL-inspired terrorist attack in his address to the Canadian people following the October 22 shootings. Interestingly enough, in a poll conducted after the Ottawa shootings, more Canadians
considered the shootings an act of mental illness than considered it an act of terrorism. But, we digress…
Continue reading →