Name of alleged shooter is revealed
The name of the alleged shooter from Monday has been revealed: Seth Scott Hatfield, a 25‑year‑old from Lethbridge, Alberta, where a search is being carried out Tuesday in a house there. His name also appears on a lengthy manifesto found in a hotel room from which he presumably began shooting.
(CTV has started autoplaying commercials over their news pages, so be warned.)
Ian 20:41 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
How is he “alleged”? To say that doesn’t even make sense in l legal terms. He did it, his culpability is up gir discussion technically but the simple fact of the action is clear.
qatzelok 20:45 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
Someone killed a cop a day after the mayor mentionned how bad the police were to her husband, and now we have an invisible suspect who is also silent.
Where are the photos of the dead suspect?
Kate 22:33 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
Ian, the headline to that piece reads “Alleged police shooter identified” – in journalism, until someone is convicted in a court of law, it’s safest to “allege” although I’m not entirely sure this remains necessary when the “alleged” is also dead and thus no trial can take place.
Nicholas 23:29 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
Tricky here. Shooting is not necessarily a crime; I’ve seen “alleged driver John Doe hits pedestrian”, even when it’s clear he was a driver. Also you can’t live a dead person, so alleged isn’t legally necessary. And as you say, charges can’t ever be laid; civil suits against the estate could be, but that wouldn’t let you say murderer, like OJ. (Though lots of people called him a murderer anyway.)
Mark Côté 09:46 on 2026-06-24 Permalink
Guessing this is not going to be labelled as terrorism despite his manifesto’s clear political ideology.
Kate 10:01 on 2026-06-24 Permalink
I saw terrorism mentioned at first, but not so much by Wednesday.
But it’s a question of definition. Is it always terrorism when a heinous act is committed for ideological reasons? Or does terrorism imply that there’s some sort of cause which the assailant feels he is supporting by his actions?
In a case like Hatfield’s, it feels like he was a solitary person who became fixated on certain ideas and felt there was some logic in carrying out carnage.
Rebel Media has the entire manifesto and I’ve located it, from curiosity, but not downloaded it nor do I plan to waste time reading it. But people who study psychopathology may end up mining something out of it that clarifies what Hatfield thought he was doing.
I doubt it will be called terrorism.
H. John 12:38 on 2026-06-24 Permalink
Prof. Tandeep Sidhu, U of Manitoba, writes:
“Ian Lafrenière, Québec’s domestic safety minister, said just hours after the shooting that it wasn’t linked to terrorism.
This statement is troubling not just because it was made prematurely, in the early stages of the investigation, but also because it contradicted media reporting that outlines the shooter’s grievances in a manifesto linked to the “involuntary celibacy” or “incel” movement. There is growing evidence of an ideological dimension to the shooting.”
His article:
The Montréal shooting spotlights the growing public safety threat of online radicalization
https://tinyurl.com/4zjcbv7m
H. John 12:55 on 2026-06-24 Permalink
@Kate asks “Is it always terrorism when a heinous act is committed for ideological reasons?”
I think it’s still an open question in this case.
Canadian authorities increasingly treat violent incel ideology as a form of ideologically motivated violent extremism.
In 2020, the RCMP and federal prosecutors treated the Toronto “Incel Rebellion” machete killing as a terrorism case—the first known Canadian terrorism prosecution based on incel ideology rather than religious or nationalist extremism. The theory was that the attack was motivated by an ideological cause and intended to intimidate or influence a broader population.