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Update: A "suspicious package" has been reported at another Tim Horton's. Avoid Tim Horton's today. Really. There are also rumours that a man, possibly the one who was killed, walked into the coffee shop with some kind of device strapped to his chest. Blogs have been leaping on the image of a man with explosives and wires strapped to his body. This may or may not be true. The idea being that he walked in and...what? Went to the washroom? Why detonate there rather than in the dining area? I also think it's unlikely that, if a man walked into a coffee shop with wires protruding from a vest, people wouldn't start running right away. But the stampede started after the explosion. If this guy did have a bomb, nobody saw it. Why Tim Horton's? Well, it's guaranteed to be busy. Timmy's will have lines forming while the Coffee Time next door is empty. It's also been elevated to something of a Canadian icon. I can't think of a comparison in the States...it'd be like McDonalds if people were actually fond of McDonalds. I've also discovered today how well-prepared the Toronto police are for terrorist attacks; they showed up at the first Tim Horton's with hazmat suits and bomb-disposal robots, cordoned off the street and locked down the neighbourhood within minutes. And I've learned how unprepared the news media is; they clearly pre-record huge portions of their Sunday news. Right now two politico wind bags are blustering at each other about nonsense. "And coming up next, our online poll!" If this was a Monday (or America) we'd have wall-to-wall coverage of the "Terror at Timmy's," complete with splash graphics created within seconds of the blast and chopper-cam shots of the exterior of the building. The world is a scary place, even when things aren't blowing up. |
