That morning, a man carrying a long gun and outfitted in military camouflage was seen in the Côte-des-Neige neighbourhood in Montreal. Police arrived, and a shootout resulted in three deaths, which included thirty-four-year-old police officer Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, civilian Michel Mizrahi, and the twenty-five-year-old shooter, identified as Seth Hatfield of Alberta.
“He may as well be the Reincarnation of Marc Lepine. 37 years later, he returns to Canada to continue his mission,” reads one post in the forum.
“New Canadian hero who shall sit among Lépine and Alek,” another user posted in the same thread.
Those names, Marc Lépine and Alek Minassian, are frequently evoked in this forum, which boasts more than 40,000 members as self-proclaimed incels and contains more than 23 million posts. (The forum was created in 2017, launched after the Reddit community r/incels was banned.) Lépine and Minassian are often described as though they are luminaries, seminal figures lionized for carrying out two of the worst mass killings in Canada’s history.
