Grandma, student among 8 women killed in Toronto massacre

Eight women including a great-grandmother and a single mom were among the 10 pedestrians run down in Toronto this week by a man with an apparent grudge against women, police said Friday.

The deceased ranged in age from 22 to 94 years, and included a Jordanian man visiting his son in Toronto and a South Korean student, Inspector Bryan Bott of the homicide squad told a news conference.

They died when the suspect drove a rented van along a sidewalk in the north end of Canada's largest city.

"We can tell you today that all victims have been identified and their families have been notified," Bott said.

The oldest victim, Mary Elizabeth Forsyth, 94, had relied on a walker but took a daily stroll to area shops and to feed the birds. She was unable to move out of the way of the fast-moving van.

Great-grandmother Dorothy Sewell, 80, and Geraldine Brady, 83, who still sold mail-order beauty products, met similar fates.

Anne Marie D'Amico, 30, who worked at a nearby investment management company, and university student So He Chung, 22, had attended the same Toronto high school. They died meters (yards) apart.

Andrea Bradden, 33, also worked in the Toronto north end neighborhood, as did steakhouse chef Chul Min Kang, 45.

Beutis Renuka Amarasingha, 45, was a single mother of a seven-year-old boy and was active in the local Sri Lankan immigrant community.

Munir Abdo Habib Najjar, 85, had only been in Canada with his wife a few weeks to visit their son, a vocalist with the Canadian Arabic Orchestra, when tragedy struck. Ji Hun Kim, 22, from South Korea, was studying in Canada.

Bott also said the confirmed number of people injured has risen to 16, and that two additional attempted murder charges would soon be laid to reflect that number.

The pair of newly identified injured - a 21-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman - had left the scene of the attack before emergency responders arrived but subsequently went to police, officials explained.

"This is a very complex tragedy," said Ontario chief coroner Dirk Huyer, describing an enormous effort that went into confirming the victims' identities.

"We needed to do the additional work to ensure that there was no confusion or any potential additional grief," he said.

The suspect Alek Minassian, 25, of Canada, was arrested on Monday near the scene of the rampage and taken into custody.

In a Facebook post just prior to the killing spree, he praised mass killer Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old American who murdered six people and then killed himself in California in 2014.

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