Man acts out mock mass shooting on Burnaby SkyTrain platform, says witness
Posted July 24, 2020 10:17 am.
Last Updated July 24, 2020 7:33 pm.
BURNABY (NEWS 1130) – Transit police are trying to piece more details together after a witness says he and others saw a man apparently pretend to act out a mass shooting at the Metrotown SkyTrain Station on Friday.
No criminal offence appears to have occurred, however, police say they received multiple reports from people who described a man “acting aggressively.”
“I was on the train and out the window I saw, as the train stopped, it looked like an altercation between this young man dressed in all black and this woman who, it looked like she was trying to get away from him,” Taylor, a witness who was commuting around 7:30 a.m. described.
It’s then that things took an even darker turn.
“It looked like she was running away from him and he put up his hand and made a kind of a gun out of his fingers and proceeded to pretend to shoot her,” Taylor said.
“I thought that was kind of weird, and then he continued to walk up the train station and found another young woman and got really close to her. I thought he was going to run into her or even push her, and did the exact same thing and just proceeded to pretend to execute her.”
Everyone on the SkyTrain was watching in disbelief, Taylor recalled, adding that’s when the man raised his hand and “pretended to shoot everybody.”
“Especially in today’s day and age, it’s not something to joke around with. It looked like he was just pretending to carry out a mass shooting or whatever, but this specifically targetting young women very much in the incel kind of vain of things,” he said.
Taylor quickly called Transit Police, who confirmed officers had received other reports of the incident
“Our officers were dispatched, went to Metrotown, they patrolled the area thoroughly,” Constable Mike Yake explains. “But, unfortunately, they weren’t able to find a man who did match that description.”
Police have yet to determine if anything criminal did happen, however, they will continue to investigate until a determination is made.
Few details were available Friday morning.