Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, of Victoria-Fraserview, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has been arrested. He is accused of driving a black Audi Q7, a luxury sport utility vehicle, into a crowd at the Lapu Lapu Day festival on the evening of April 26, 2025.
The Filipino community festival was primarily held within John Oliver Secondary School at East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street in Vancouver. The crash happened just before 8:00 p.m. on a street lined with food trucks behind the school.
A total of 11 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The ages of the victims who were killed range from 5 to 65.
The attack is not being investigated as an act of terrorism, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Only one suspect was involved in the attack, according to the department’s interim chief Steve Rai.
Yoseb Vardeh owns a food truck selling bao buns at the event. The attack happened right in front of his van, he told BBC.
“This guy, he killed some of my customers,” Vardeh said of Lo. “There was people waiting for their buns that got hit.”
Kai-Ji Adam Lo
Lo is Alexander Lo‘s younger brother. They moved from Kaohsiung, Taiwan to Vancouver with their parents in the 2010s.
Alexander and Kai-Ji’s father died of an illness shortly after they arrived in Vancouver.
At around 1:00 on January 28, 2024, Alexander was found dead on the floor of a residence on Henry Street near Knight Street and East 33rd Avenue in Vancouver. He was 31.
It was the first homicide in Vancouver in 2024. A resident of the city named Dwight William Kematch, then 39, was arrested at the scene.
On January 29, 2024, Kematch was charged with second-degree homicide and on April 12, 2024, he appeared by video before Vancouver Provincial Court judge Jennifer Oulton. His trial will start in October 2025, according to his defense lawyer Jim Heller.
In August 2024, Kai-Ji’s mother Lisa Lo was hospitalized after attempting suicide. On September 11, 2024, he asked GoFundMe donors to help his “grieving mother keep her home” as “she recently was admitted to the ICU because she tried to take her own life”.
After Alexander’s death, health care professionals and police officers in Vancouver had significant interactions with Kai-Ji, according to the city’s mayor Ken Sim. Hours before the Lapu-Lapu Day festival attack in the city on April 26, 2025, a family member contacted a hospital psych ward because Kai-Ji was reportedly suffering from delusions and paranoia.
On the afternoon of April 27, 2027, Kai-Ji was charged with with eight counts of second-degree murder. He will appear in court for a bail hearing before the day ends.
Lapu-Lapu Festival
Lapu-Lapu was a chief of Mactan, Cebu, Philippines. On April 27, 1521, he and his men defeated Spanish forces led by Ferdinand Magellan, an explorer from Portugal.
In April 2017, the Philippines’ 16th president Rodrigo Duterte declared April 27 as Lapu-Lapu Day. On April 29, 2018, he signed a law declaring April 27 a special nonworking holiday throughout the country in honor of Lapu-Lapu.
In 2023, the Lapu-Lapu Day festival was officially set up in Vancouver, which is home to 141,230 Canadians of Filipino descent. The festival symbolizes the cultural harmony and mutual respect that thrive in British Columbia.
CONAN Daily 