Mourners including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper paid respects in Quebec on Saturday at the second of two funerals for soldiers killed in attacks police said were carried out independently by radical recent converts to Islam.
Patrice Vincent, a 53-year-old warrant officer, died on Oct. 20 near Montreal when a man ran over him and a fellow soldier with a car. The driver was later shot and killed by police.
Vincent's funeral on Saturday in the city of Longueuil, Quebec, drew more than a thousand mourners, including a combination of soldiers, police, firefighters. Vincent had served nearly three decades in the Canadian military, including some time spent as a firefighter, and was just a few years from retirement.
Officials described Vincent's killer, 25-year-old Martin Rouleau, as a man motivated by radical beliefs. Harper has condemned the killings as terrorist acts. "Someone dear to you has been taken away by the revolting actions of a person motivated by a barbaric ideology, an ideology contrary to the values of justice, freedom and compassion that we share as Canadians," he said in a speech at the private funeral.
The shock of Vincent's killing was compounded by a separate attack in Ottawa on Oct 22, when a gunman shot dead a soldier guarding a national war memorial and stormed the country's Parliament building. That attacker was also shot dead by security services.
IN-DEPTH
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