Toronto Van Attack Suspect: 'I Accomplished My Mission'

A newly released video shows a man who allegedly used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto telling police that he's part of an online group of sexually frustrated men who plot attacks against people who have sex. Alek Minassian, 26, is accused of driving a rental van into crowds of pedestrians in a busy Toronto neighborhood on April 23, 2018. Eight women and two men ranging in age from 22 to 94 died. The police interview released Friday took place just hours after the attack, the AP reports. "I feel like I accomplished my mission," Minassian said when asked by the detective how he feels about the deaths of 10 people. Minassian, who said he never had a girlfriend and was a virgin, acknowledged he used the van as a weapon and said he wanted to inspire more attacks.

"I know of several other guys over the Internet who feel the same way," he said, adding they are "too cowardly to act on their anger." Minassian calls himself an "incel," short for "involuntary celibate." He said he was in contact with Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in shooting and stabbing attacks in 2014 near the University of California, Santa Barbara before shooting himself. Minassian said he "radicalized" around the time of the Rodger attack. "I felt it was time to take action and not just sit on the sidelines and just fester in my own sadness," he said. He called himself a "supreme gentlemen" and said he felt "very angry" women would not date him. His trial on 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder begins in February.

(More Alek Minassian stories.)