Commonwealth _Canada _ Police think the stabbings that occurred at a University of Waterloo, Ontario classroom on Wednesday were motivated by hate and were intended to target a gender studies class. A 24-year-old former foreign student has been charged in connection with the crime.
In a media briefing on Thursday, Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Mark Crowell described the “planned and targeted attack” as a “senseless act of hate.”
The incident in Hagey Hall, which resulted in three persons being hospitalized, is still under investigation, according to the police. Geovanny Villalba-Aleman has been accused in the interim. According to Crowell, the defendant is innocent.
Police stated that “this was a hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity.”
When the stabbings occurred, there were about 40 kids there. A 38-year-old female professor from Kitchener and two students, both from Waterloo and aged 20 and 19, were brought to the hospital with significant but non-life-threatening wounds.
The professor was named as Katy Fulfer by University of Waterloo president Vivek Goel in a tweet. According to the university website, Fulfer has the titles of associate professor of philosophy and undergraduate adviser for gender and social justice.
The announcement of the charges follows a statement from university administrators that the internal emergency alert system didn’t perform as intended following the stabbings.
A warning was given to students via the WatSAFE app 90 minutes after the event, according to Rebecca Elming, a university representative.
She said that a tweet from earlier in the day about testing the app was taken down to prevent confusing genuine notifications with test alerts.
A “second look at our emergency notification systems” is required, according to Nick Manning, associate vice president of communications.
