Man, 28, charged with second-degree murder in North Vancouver stabbings

VANCOUVER — Flowers and wreaths were laid Sunday near the scene of a stabbing rampage that left a young woman dead and injured six others in and around a library in North Vancouver, B.C., a day earlier. 

A 28-year-old man has been charged with second-degree murder in the attack. 

The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said Sunday that Yannick Bandaogo is in police custody after undergoing surgery for self-inflicted wounds. 

“His background, history in B.C. and relationship to the victims, if any, is still being determined,” Sgt. Frank Jang said in a written statement issued Sunday.

Police have not named the woman who died, but said she was in her 20s. 

Six others were injured in the attack at the Lynn Valley Public Library. Police said their injuries vary in severity and all six are expected to survive. 

IHIT investigators spent Sunday combing the area for evidence and interviewing witnesses, Jang said, while RCMP officers were looking after the victims, their families and the first responders who attended the scene. 

“We share the community’s grief and outrage,” said Supt. Ghalib Bhayani of the North Vancouver RCMP. “Lynn Valley Library is a peaceful place. A place where our community comes to learn and our children come to explore.”

Susie Chant, member of the B.C. legislature for North Vancouver-Seymour, said she arrived at the scene shortly after paramedics on Saturday.

“I saw victims being stabilized, people trying to help each other to be calm,” she said in an interview on Sunday after laying a wreath outside the library. 

The pile of flowers and wreaths left just outside the caution tape cordoning off the crime scene grew throughout the day as residents stopped by.  

“I think this just so illustrates how much of a community we are,” Chant said. “Lynn Valley in specific, and North Van in general, is a place where the community cares for each other and wants to do the right thing.”

Members of the community came to the aid of those who were victims of the attack on Saturday, witnesses said. 

Darren Hailes said he arrived in the area after finishing up a run with some friends, and someone approached him to ask if he had first aid training. 

He did, so he went to help. 

“We weren’t immediately aware of the violence that had just taken place because the area was so calm,” Hailes recounted in an interview on Sunday. 

He said people brought tea towels and other supplies, including a first aid kit, to the library. 

Hailes estimates he arrived about a minute after the attacker left the lobby.

“The passage of time is quite blurry in my mind, but it didn’t feel very long before I first saw a fire engine pull up in front of the library and police arrived and paramedics arrived,” he said. “They immediately, of course, went to triage all of the different victims.”

Hailes said he later talked to a man who tried to lure the attacker away from other people around the library.

“Realizing he wasn’t going to be able to intervene and stop a man with a knife on his own, he immediately began to back away and to call the attacker toward him.” 

The man backed through the library lobby and down the street and he was there when police arrested the suspect, Hailes said.

Steve Mossop and his partner also stopped when they saw a woman who was covered in blood while they were driving on Lynn Valley Road, Mossop said Saturday.  

They initially thought she’d been in a car accident, but she told them that she’d been stabbed, Mossop said, adding that he and his partner saw several victims within about 100 metres of each other. 

“It seemed like he was just running in a direction, whoever was in his path happened to be victimized,” he said. 

“There was a man, there was an older woman, there was a younger woman, a mom. A random group of individuals in the wrong place at the wrong time.”  

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 28, 2021. 

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press