Government leaders gathered in a show of resolution a day after a deadly attack on Canada's Parliament, as authorities and everyday Canadians sifted through confounding shards of the gunman's life seeking to understand what motivated the man to storm the nation's seat of power, reports GHN based on Fox News.
The emerging portrait of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau is a fragmented one: A misfit who went more than five years without seeing his mother. A crack cocaine user who once told a psychological evaluator he wanted to go to jail to beat his addiction. A committed Muslim who said he wanted to become a better man, but in recent weeks seemed to come unglued. A homeless shelter resident who talked about wanting to go to Libya - or Syria - and became upset when he couldn't get a passport.
A day after the 32-year-old Canadian launched what the prime minister called a terrorist attack, a top police official said Thursday that Zehaf-Bibeau - whose father was from Libya - may have lashed out in frustration over delays in getting his passport.
"I think it was central to what was driving him," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson on Thursday.
Bibeau shot a soldier to death at Canada's national war memorial Wednesday, then stormed the Parliament building, where he was gunned down by the sergeant-at-arms. Police said he was armed with a lever-action Winchester rifle, an old-fashioned, relatively slow-firing weapon.
The deadly attack was the second on Canadian soldiers in three days, forcing the country to confront the danger of radicalized citizens in its midst and exposing weak spots in security:
- During the attack, Prime Minister Stephen Harper hid in a closet-like space within a Parliament caucus room. The Mounties who are assigned to protect him were on the other side of the room's doors. The Mounties will now guard the prime minister around the clock, wherever he goes, Paulson said.