One of the 10 people who were mowed down and killed by a van in Toronto on Monday has been identified as an investment analyst working for a US-based firm.
Anne Marie D’Amico was the first casualty of the van attack to be identified, after the notification of her next of kin.
D’Amico was employed by the American investment management company Invesco, which also has offices on Yonge Street in Toronto, not far from where police say Alek Minassian, 25, deliberately plowed into pedestrians with a white rental van, killing 10 and leaving 15 others injured.
First victim: Anne Marie D’Amico (center) has been identified as one of the 10 people who were run over and killed by a van in Toronto on Monday
Police say Alek Minassian, 25 (left), used a rental van to plow into pedestrians on a busy Toronto street, killing 10 people and injuring 15 others. D’Amico (right) was among the slain
Invesco Canada President Peter Intraligi confirmed D’Amico’s passing on Tuesday but declined to comment further out of the respect for her family.
D’Amico’s colleague Jon Tam told CBC she was warm and caring, was involved in volunteer work and enjoyed travel in her free time.
‘I’ll definitely be missing seeing that smile around the office,’ he said.
According to a 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility Report issued by Invesco Canada, D’Amico’s title at the time was business performance management analyst.
According to the report, she took part in a humanitarian project in the Dominican Republic, as part of which a group of Invesco workers helped build a new house for a local family.
The front end damage of the van that the driver used to hit several pedestrians in Toronto, Ontario, on Monday, killing 10
Police officers stand by a covered body in Toronto after the deadly van attack Monday
‘What I didn’t expect was to have such a deep connection to the family and see first-hand how much this new home truly means to them,’ D’Amico was quoted as saying about her experience.
A white Ryder van was heading south on busy Yonge Street at around 1.30pm and the streets were crowded with people enjoying an unseasonably warm day when the vehicle jumped onto the sidewalk and proceeded to mow down pedestrians along a mile-long stretch, without making any effort to stop.
The driver, a resident of the Richmond Hill section of Toronto, was quickly captured in a tense but brief confrontation with officers.
‘The incident definitely looked deliberate,’ Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters at a late-night news conference.
Minassian had not been known to police previously. An online social media profile described him as a college student.
Officials would not comment on a possible motive except to play down a possible connection to terrorism, but social media posts attributed to Minassian painted him as a sexually frustrated involuntarily celibate who admired Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger.
In one post, Minassian referred to the rebellion of ‘incels’ – a term used to refer to men who have been made ‘involuntarily celibate’ because women will not have sex with them.
In 2014, Rodger, who was also involuntarily celibate, gunned down six people at the University of California Santa Barbara before killing himself.
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