Gunman ID’d in Edmonton mass murder had ties to victims, criminal past

The suspect in the mass murder of six adults and two children in Edmonton was a maintenance man at the restaurant where he took his own life, The Canadian Press has been told. The daughter-in-law of an owner of VN Express says Phu Lam, 53, had a key to the Fort Saskatchewan eatery and would have had access after hours; Huong Tran says the man was her mother-in-law’s ex-husband. Police have yet to publicly identify their suspect and have only said the man who killed himself in the restaurant had a business interest in the place, that he had a criminal record dating back to 1987 and that he used a stolen handgun in the attacks. But Lam is also listed as one of the owners of the north Edmonton home where seven of the eight dead were found, CBC News reports.

Despite the suspect’s criminal past, police have emphasized there is nothing to suggest the killings were anything other than a ‘planned and deliberate’ act of domestic violence.

The Canadian Press reports

The shooting started just before 7 p.m. Monday, around the time police say a man entered a southwest Edmonton home, opened fire and fled. When officers arrived they found 37-year-old Cyndi Duong dead, and only 90 minutes later responded to reports of a suicidal man at a northeast residence. They searched the exterior of the home, found nothing overtly suspicious and did not go inside but returned hours later after neighbours reported seeing a man and a woman sitting outside the home looking like they “had seen a ghost.” Police then entered the residence to find that two men and three woman between the ages of 25 and 50, and a girl and a boy — both under the age of 10 — were dead. Police tracked a black SUV seen at the first shooting to VN Express in Fort Saskatchewan, northeast of Edmonton. When tactical officers forced their way into the establishment, they found the suspect — the same suicidal man they had been called to check on — dead by his own hand.

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