16-05-2025
Vancouver Lapu-Lapu festival planning took all necessary measures before attack, preliminary review says
All the necessary precautions were taken last month in the planning of the Lapu-Lapu Day festival by organizers, police and city workers, a preliminary review by the Vancouver Police and City of Vancouver has found.
Eleven people were killed and many more were injured when an SUV ploughed through a crowd at the end of the celebration.
How the horror of the deadly Lapu-Lapu vehicle attack unfolded
But the review found the April 26 festival posed no particular security concerns and did not warrant a dedicated police or traffic officer presence, even though the festival had expanded in size since the first year last year of the family-friendly event.
A site walkthrough by the city's film and special events office the morning of the event identified some issues with parking and confirmed that organizers had sawhorses blocking vehicular access to the streets where food trucks and vendors had set up, according to a technical briefing held before a Friday morning press conference at city hall.
Inspector Jeff Neuman with the VPD's emergency and operational planning section said in hindsight, the department would have liked to have deployed police cruisers or other vehicles in place of these sawhorses.
Just 10 special events last year required dump trucks or other heavy vehicles to block perimeters to stop any cars from entering celebrations, the report stated.
The province has called its own review into the public-safety risks faced by hundreds of summer events, which is being conducted by former B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson and expected to be finished by the end of this month.
A final municipal report to be released in August will focus on the police response to the attack.
Kai-Ji Adam Lo has been in jail since he was detained by bystanders at the scene and then arrested. He has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder. The Vancouver police have said more charges are forthcoming.
