A recent graduate of the University of Waterloo in Ontario was charged with assault Thursday, accused of stabbing a professor and two students in a gender studies class in what police described as a “hate-motivated incident.”
Jehovahnny Villalba-Aleman, 24, an international student who graduated in 2022, was charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and harm, Waterloo Regional Police said in a declaration and a press conference. He appeared in court Thursday for a bail hearing, where police requested that he remain in custody.
It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.
“The defendant targeted a gender studies course and investigators believe this was a hate-motivated incident related to gender identity and expression,” the statement said.
Police said about 40 students were in a classroom on Wednesday at about 3:40 pm when the suspect entered and stabbed three people: a 38-year-old female professor; a 20-year-old student and a 19-year-old student. All three were taken to hospital with “serious but not life-threatening” injuries, police said.
In what he described As a “shocking attack,” James Rush, the university’s vice president, said in a statement Thursday that the stabbing occurred during a lecture in a class called Philosophy 202 – Gender Studies. According to the university website, the class examines “the construction of gender in the history of philosophy through contemporary discussions”. Questions the class raises include, “What is gender? How do we “do” gender? How can we “null” gender – and do we want to?”
Chief Mark Crowell of the Waterloo Regional Police said in a news conference that the suspect had entered the classroom and spoke briefly with the professor, ostensibly to confirm the lecture’s topic. Then, he stabbed her with two knives, stabbed the other two students, and attempted to stab a third.
Students in the room either fled or tried to intervene, throwing objects at the suspect, Chief Crowell said. Mr. Villalba-Aleman then left the room and tried to camouflage himself as the victim, but witnesses identified him to police. He was arrested in the building, he said.
The University of Waterloo has approximately 42,000 students and is one of the best technology schools in the world, requiring engineering and computer science students to combine studies with work. BlackBerry and other startups of yesteryear grew out of student projects at the university.
We his Facebook page On Thursday, the university said members of its community would gather on campus “in recognition of the shocking attack and trauma we experienced yesterday.”
The Facebook page has become a platform for people to vent their anger over the attack. Some questioned why the school’s emergency alert system had failed and why students were allowed to attend classes in other parts of the campus without being notified that an attack had occurred. Others wrote about the attack in the broader context of gender-based violence, even before police identified a motive.
Mr. Rush said in his statement that the campus emergency alert system, despite testing being concluded on the same day as the attack, “didn’t go off as quickly as we all would have expected.”
“I recognize that many people will speculate about the motivation for this attack; we must be patient and have faith in the judicial process,” Rush said before the charges were announced. “I urge you to focus your energies on supporting one another during this very traumatic time.”
There have been other gender-related attacks at Canadian universities, including in 1989, when a man who blamed women for his career and financial woes fatally shot 14 female students and employees of École Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal.
Chief Crowell said the suspicion was aimed at “intentionally targeting the subject of gender identity and gender expression”.
“We have seen and heard across Canada that there is a disturbing trend” of hate-motivated incidents during Pride Month, he said.
