Alek Minassian is a Seneca College student from Richmond Hill, Ontario a suburb of Toronto. On Monday, April 22, 2018 he was identified as the suspect in the 2018 Toronto Van Attack which killed 10 people and injured 15 in North York, Ontario a suburb of Toronto. On Tuesday, April 24, 2018 Minassian was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.

Alek Minassian graduated from Thornlea Secondary School in Thornhill, Ontario a North Toronto suburb in 2011.

Shereen Chami a former classmate of Minassian, said he was part of a program at Thornlea Secondary School for high school students with special needs, attending a mix of mainstream and separate classes.

Chami remembers him walking the halls with his hands together and his head down, and making meowing noises. "He wasn't a social person, but from what I remember he was absolutely harmless," she said. Two other classmates said they attended classes for students with special needs alongside Minassian.

Special needs is a blanket term used in the Canadian education system that covers learning difficulties, behavioral difficulties as well as physical disabilities.

Ari Bluff who was in the same computer science class as Minassian in Grade 10 said, "I'm not sure if he had any very, very close friends, at least publicly," Bluff said. "I never saw him with a group of friends, generally. But whenever we would see him in the hallways, we'd always speak to him or say hi to him or whatnot."

Alek Minassian was a student at Seneca College in Toronto from 2011-April 2018, graduating about a week before the attack. He held multiple software development while studying at the school.

One classmate, who worked on a project with him at Seneca in 2015, described Minassian to The Globe and Mail as someone with a significant social or mental disability who had a hard time speaking to people, difficulty under pressure, and constant physical tics where he shook his hands and tapped his head. The man, who did not want to be identified, expressed disbelief that Mr. Minassian would even be capable of renting and piloting an automobile. He said, when he knew him, Mr. Minassian didn’t drive, and didn’t know how a steering wheel worked.

Another classmate told The Globe and Mail that Minassian was a whiz with working with specialized computer chips known as Graphical Processing Units (GPU) chips.

According to Joseph Pham, 25, who took a computer programming class with Minassian at Seneca, he was at school just last week. He described him as “socially awkward.” “He kept to himself. He didn’t really talk to anyone,” Pham said.

While in college, Alek Minassian developed a mobile app for Google Android called, "Toronto Green Parking Advisor." He published the app to the Google Play Store on December 24, 2014. The application was designed to allow users to find parking locations in Toronto near a given address.

In August 2017, Alek Minassian attempted to join the Canadian Armed Forces however he only got 16 days into his 13-week basic training before he asked to leave, according to a statement from the Department of National Defence. He made a poor impression at the military's leadership and recruit school in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec.

"He wasn't very good at taking direction," said fellow recruit Andrew Summerfield.

"There was a lot of disciplinary action put towards Alek because he wouldn't understand something and they'd want him to do it, and then he wouldn't do it right."

Summerfield told CBC News that Minassian struggled to pass morning inspections that involved folding his clothes properly and making his bed to military standards. He said it appeared Minassian "had some sort of condition," but he never shared what it was with Summerfield and other members of their platoon.

"I spent a decent amount of time with him one on one trying to get him to be able to understand stuff, but it just seemed like he didn't have the capacity," said Summerfield, who has since left the military.

"You could tell he was very socially inept."

A senior Canadian Forces official told CBC News about similar issues with Minassian, including dress, deportment and group interactions in a military setting.

But nothing during Minassian's time in training would have pointed to the potential of his involvement in Monday's rampage, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"He wasn't adapting to the military lifestyle," the official said.

"There were no red flags and nothing that would point to anything like this."

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He complained about his dislike of military discipline and was quickly judged an average or below-average recruit.

Minassian had had no weapons training by the time he was released, the official said.

Alek Minassian lived in Richmond Hill, Ontario a suburb of Toronto.

Alek Minassian had a Steam profile with the username Xboxlightside that he last used 5 years ago. The profile said that he enjoyed playing Halo 3 video game for Xbox 360 especially online on Xbox Live. ^[1]

Mental illness is the leading theory for a motive, several American and Canadian law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation told NBC News. And while it appears that the suspect acted deliberately, terrorism does not seem to have been his motive, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

The suspect had been involved in an online discussion about Elliot Rodger, the man accused of carrying out a 2014 shooting rampage near Santa Barbara, California, that killed six people, the law enforcement officials said. Elliot Rodger went on the rampage because he wanted to punish women for rejecting him and that he envied sexually active men so he wanted to punish them for their sexual activity.

Alek Minassian had made a Facebook post stating:

On Monday, April 22, 2018 at around 1 p.m a van struck and killed nine pedestrians Monday afternoon in north Toronto and fled the scene, Toronto Police said. Sixteen others were injured in the incident. Authorities said the van has been found and the driver was in custody. Police said they did not yet know the cause or any possible motive.

Toronto Police identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25.

U.S. law enforcement sources told CBS News that the incident appears to be a deliberate act.

Witnesses said the driver was moving fast and appeared to be acting deliberately.

Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale said that it was too soon to say whether the crash was a case of international terrorism and that the government had not raised its terrorism alert.

Toronto Police Services Deputy Chief Peter Yuen released no details about the investigation as he announced the casualties.

Yuen said police were still interviewing witnesses and examining surveillance video of the incident as part of what he called a "complex" investigation.

"I can assure the public all our available resources have been brought in to investigate this tragic situation," he said.

The incident occurred as Cabinet ministers from the major industrial countries were gathered in Canada to discuss a range of international issues in the run-up to the G7 meeting near Quebec City in June.

The driver was heading south on busy Yonge Street around 1:30 p.m. and the streets were crowded with people enjoying an unseasonably warm day when the van jumped onto the sidewalk.

Ali Shaker, who was driving near the van at the time, told Canadian broadcast outlet CP24 that the driver appeared to be moving deliberately through the crowd at more than 30 mph.

"He just went on the sidewalk," a distraught Shaker said.

"He just started hitting everybody, man.

He hit every single person on the sidewalk.

Anybody in his way he would hit."

Video shown on several Canadian outlets showed police arresting the driver, dressed in dark clothes, after officers surrounded him several blocks from where the incident occurred.

A witness, Phil Zullo, told Canadian Press that he saw police arresting a man who had been driving a Ryder rental truck and saw people "strewn all over the road" where the incident occurred.

"I must have seen about five, six people being resuscitated by bystanders and by ambulance drivers," Zullo said.

"It was awful.

Brutal."

Police shut down the Yonge and Finch intersection following the incident and Toronto's transit agency said it had suspended service on the subway line running through the area.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Twitter that he was monitoring the situation.

"Our thoughts are with all those affected by the terrible incident at Yonge and Finch in Toronto," Trudeau said.

"Thank you to the first responders working at the scene - we're monitoring the situation closely."

Minassian was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.