A family and a festival: How Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day tragedy unfolded

VANCOUVER — In January last year, Cirque du Soleil usher Alexander Lo made his final public post on his Facebook timeline, promoting the circus’ Kooza show.

Four days later, his brother responded. “Brother, we will get to see this together sometime,” wrote Adam Kai-Ji Lo.

But he knew it wasn’t to be.

Alexander Lo had already been found dead in an East Vancouver home on Jan. 28, 2024, the day after his Facebook post, police said. Dwight William Kematch was promptly arrested and charged with second-degree murder, in a case that is the subject of a publication ban.

The killing was part of a series of tumultuous events that upended the Lo family, culminating last weekend with Adam Lo’s arrest on murder charges after the Lapu Lapu Day festival tragedy that killed 11 people in Vancouver, less than three kilometres from the family home.

Documents, interviews, social media posts and other accounts show the family was wracked by Alexander Lo’s killing, financial battles, what Adam Lo called a suicide attempt by their mother, and his own descent into mental illness that included time in involuntary treatment. Festival patrons and vendors, meanwhile, described how a day of celebration and joy for the Filipino community was transformed into a barely imaginable scene of tragedy.

Hanging over the Lo family was the death of David Lo on Dec. 31, 2001. Social media posts showed Alexander and Adam Lo continued to mourn their father.

“Dad I miss you everyday there’s no one day that I don’t think about you,” Alexander posted around the 22nd anniversary of his father’s death.

A month later, with Alexander dead too, Adam Lo wrote on the post: “Brother, you always mentioned about Dad. Now that you are gone, I will do my best to make sure you are close to him. You will be close to him, where he is resting now. Be at peace together.”

The killing was Vancouver’s first homicide of 2024, and Adam Lo launched a GoFundMe fundraiser that raised more than $90,000 to cover funeral costs.

“Our reality has abruptly shifted. Despite our disagreements, the harsh truth that he’s no longer with us hits me with an overwhelming force,” Adam Lo wrote.

He said he was “burdened with remorse” and that his mother, Lisa Lo, carried “indescribable sorrow for a son she brought into this world, only to see him depart so suddenly.”

The killing came amid a period of financial wrangling for Lo and his mother.

In November 2023, they filed a case in small claims court claiming about $35,000 from a Vancouver builder to fix what they said was incomplete or inadequate work on a laneway house at their home on East 44th Avenue.

The builder, Martin Tang, had a different story — he said the Lo’s defaulted on $1,800 in interest on a $30,000 construction loan they took out from his company to undertake the work, and he lodged a counterclaim seeking both amounts.

Tang said in an interview the laneway home was for Alexander Lo to live in, and Tang believed that it was he who was mentally ill and meant to live “separate” from his brother and mother in the main home.

Adam Lo, Tang said, “seemed to be quite normal at that time.” He said Lo had a job after graduating university and acted like a “normal young guy” who spoke English well; Lo said on his Facebook profile that he was from Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

In fall of 2023, Tang said he and his wife went to the laneway home without knowing Alexander Lo was already living inside — he said when his wife found him in a bedroom, Lo became “excited” and slapped her, then scratched their truck.

He said they called the police; Adam and Lisa Lo described the incident as “possible trespass” in their lawsuit.

Tang said he later learned that Alexander Lo had been murdered and three months later the lawsuit was settled, Adam and Lisa Lo paying Tang $8,000.

That September, Adam Lo launched another fundraiser.

His mother, he wrote on the GoFundMe page, had tried to kill herself and was in such financial difficulty that she was at risk of losing the family home, which BC Assessment indicates is worth $2.15 million.

“I feared I had lost the only family member I have left,” Lo wrote, posting a photo of Lisa Lo in a hospital bed. “Her suspected overdose came as a shock, but I knew she was grieving the loss of my brother and struggling immensely with her finances.”

The fundraiser only yielded a few donations, and both GoFundMe pages have been taken down.

Adam Lo, too, was struggling.

B.C.’s Health Ministry said Lo had been under the care of a mental health team with Vancouver Coastal Health and was “being followed closely” under the Mental Health Act, although it did not put a time frame on his care.

There was nothing to indicate a change in his condition that warranted involuntary hospitalization, the ministry said.

But Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said later that Lo was on “extended leave” — a term referring to permitted leave from a state of involuntary care.

Interim Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai, meanwhile, said Lo had numerous interactions and “substantive contact” with police and health workers over mental health issues.

On April 1, Lo changed his Facebook profile picture to Batman surveying a dark and stormy cityscape. “Vancouver is Gotham,” he wrote. His previous profile picture had been a winged angel, all in white.

On Friday, April 25, Lo had one final interaction with police, a day before the Lapu Lapu Day festival.

Vancouver Police spokesman Sgt. Steve Addison said the incident, which involved police in a neighbouring jurisdiction, “was not criminal in nature and it didn’t rise to the level where it required mental health intervention.”

‘IT’S VERY JOYFUL’

Volunteer Noa Sison arrived early at the Lapu Lapu Day festival site in South Vancouver on Saturday, April 26.

He was in the area west of Fraser Street at around 7:30 a.m. There was plenty to do, setting up tents and then helping attendees have the best day possible.

It was the second year for the Vancouver festival, named in honour of the Filipino leader whose forces defeated and killed Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. But the festival was on a bigger scale than last’s year’s rain-soaked event, and organizers billed it as “a first of its kind multi-block party.”

East 43rd Avenue, running alongside the grounds of John Oliver Secondary School, was lined with food trucks selling Filipino treats, bubble tea, spiral fried potatoes and more.

The school grounds hosted the main stage, a basketball tournament, cultural programming and stalls by community organizations, while other festivities occupied back parking lots stretching from East 43rd Avenue to East 47th Avenue. The neighbourhood is a core area for Metro Vancouver’s 140,000-strong Filipino community.

“The vibe was fun,” said Sison. “I know a lot of my friends went. It’s very joyful.”

Social media images posted throughout the day show large crowds, smiling faces, colourful hats and costumes.

Municipal, provincial and federal political figures were also there. Premier David Eby said he attended with his daughter, taking to the stage with legislator Mable Elmore, who is of Filipino heritage.

“When I think about what’s core to my experiences with the Filipino community, it’s family, it’s love, it’s celebration and that’s what (the festival) was — music and food and joy,” Eby said later.

The mood was light — Vancouver city councillors held up pastries in social media photos, while others posed for photos with the insect mascot for Jollibee, the Filipino fast-food franchise.

Local hairdresser Donna Fathi said she started livestreaming the event around noon, keen to share the excitement of the day.

She told viewers “now it’s time to come down before all the food sells out, which usually happens at Filipino festivals because everyone goes for the food.”

“The crowds kept growing and growing and growing by the afternoon,” she said in an interview.

Clothing vendor Kris Pangilinan flew out from Toronto to sell at the festival.

“We had a great time. Everyone was laughing, smiling. It was too perfect in a way. It was sunny, not a cloud in the sky,” he said.

By 7 p.m. the festival’s musical headliners, rapper apl.de.ap and J-Rey Soul of the Black Eyed Peas, took to the main stage as the closing act of the day.

Both members of the Filipino community, they launched into a joyous rendition of “Let’s Get It Started,” the crowd jumping in time to the familiar beat.

Fathi was there in a group of nine, including her husband and daughter. “The whole grass was covered. You could not see the grass. It was an amazing turnout, great concert,” she said.

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh arrived late in the day, amid the closing stages of the federal campaign. He posed for photos around 7:30 p.m. as apl.de.ap and J-Rey Soul belted out the Black Eyed Peas’ “Mabuti.” He left soon afterwards, around 8 p.m. Attendance by then was starting to thin, but the playing field in front of the main stage, as well as East 43rd, were both still crowded.

Vancouver resident Van Pham had turned up with his Filipino wife and young son at around 7:15 p.m. It was still busy enough that they had a hard time finding parking.

But, he said, “you could tell there were a lot of vendors that had already left at that time,” so he and his family went to the main strip of food trucks on 43rd Avenue. “This was the busiest place in the festival,” he said. The family ordered a tornado fried potato, “twirled around a stick.”

“The food trucks are busy. People were lining up. There was music. It was good. They were just having good time, having food,” he said.

But they didn’t stay long, and by 8 p.m. they were grocery shopping a couple of blocks away from the festival strip.

Pangilinan said that at around 7:50 p.m. people began flooding out of the festival grounds at the school via 43rd.

“It just looked like a wave of people slowly leaving the fenced area. And so they would like, sneak between the food trucks and just kind of find their way out.”

A video posted on Facebook timestamped 8:02 p.m. shows crowds streaming down the street, mostly heading east towards Fraser. Some food truck vendors had their shutters down, but others were still serving customers.

‘PEOPLE WERE SCREAMING’

Police say that at around 8:14 p.m. a black Audi SUV appeared at the western end of the festival area.

Pangilinan said it initially crept through an entrance on 43rd Ave, slowly making its way through the crowd in a way that seemed “just normal” for the end of a festival.

“The vehicle started slowly making its way past the first two or three booths, and then it side-swiped someone on the right, and then when it got in front of my booth, it accelerated really quickly,” he said.

“He started to pick up speed, and then I was like, ‘Oh, he’s really fast,’ and before I knew it, it went right into the crowd.”

Pangilinan said there were “dozens of bodies getting hit by the vehicle and flying in the air.” He described the sound as they landed on the pavement.

“It was kind of surreal … something out of a movie,” he said.

He later watched as the table where he had been displaying clothing for sale was used as a stretcher to carry victims to ambulances.

Nic Magtajas and Jihed Issa were working at a store facing the festival and initially had their backs to the scene when they heard an engine revving.

Magtejas turned to see the SUV roaring through the street.

“I saw a bunch of people go over, go high up from the impact of hitting the car,” said Magtajas, 19. “People were screaming,” said Issa, 17.

“I ran outside to the street and I was trying to figure out what happened. I made it to halfway into the street, looked around (and) there was a lot of people panicking, people on the floor — bodies.”

Victims and debris were strewn over about 100 metres of East 43rd.

At the eastern end of the carnage was the black SUV, its front end caved in, the hood buckled. A cap was wedged into the wreckage.

Bystanders apprehended the driver, who police said attempted to flee the scene. Video of the moment shows him up against the chain-link fence outside the school, less than 50 metres from the wrecked car.

Hip-hop artist Jacob Bureros was among the group who ran down the suspect.

“I ran on this side, there were others running on that side, and they cornered him,” he said in an interview.

“I jumped the fence and came around, and we were there, and everyone was really angry, and he got hit, and then other people kind of protected him and stood around him so that the community couldn’t take out community justice on him. Everyone was really angry.”

Bureros said the man kept asking people not to hurt him. He saw “no remorse, no concern, no regret.”

Videos show a couple of men, including one in a security uniform, separating the suspect from the screaming crowd gathered around him. “That’s him”, “Smile you piece of shit”, “You know what you did?,” they shout.

“I’m sorry,” the man responds, touching his hand to his head.

Among the 11 people killed were teacher-counsellor Kira Salim, artist Jenifer Darbellay, and two families of three — Realtor Richard Le, Lin Hoang and their five-year-old daughter Katie Le; and Colombian immigrants Daniel Samper, his wife Glitza Maria Caicedo, and their adult daughter Glitza Daniela Samper.

Van Pham said he was driving down Fraser Street at around 8:20 p.m. with his family when they saw about five police cars rushing by.

“It could have been any one of us,” he said.

In August 2020, Alexander Lo had posted a photo taken at Canada Place, the waters of Burrard Inlet in the background.

“Family time!” he captioned the picture showing him with his mother, arm in arm with a handsome young man on her other side, trim in athletic wear with short-cropped hair and a slight smile.

Adam Lo is just recognizable as the same man against the fence almost five years later — much heavier, his bushy hair dishevelled, his eyes staring wide.

He has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder, and police have said more charges are expected. On Friday, a judge ordered a mental health assessment to see if Lo is fit to stand trial.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 3, 2025.

Brieanna Charlebois, Chuck Chiang, Darryl Greer and Nono Shen, The Canadian Press