Thursday, August 20, 2020

The Almost Chainsaw Maskacre

The pun in the title is deliberate.

Last weekend, in the quiet, mild-mannered city of Toronto, Ontario*, there was almost a real chainsaw massacre. Two heavily tattooed men, armed with chainsaws, attacked an anti-mask rave being held at Cherry Beach on the Toronto waterfront. 

The incident in the video took place August 9 at around 9:30 in the morning. David Sullivan, who lives in the encampment and took the video, told VICE News he was instrumental in dealing with them as they came at the crowd. He said the men showed up earlier, while the party was ongoing and he quickly recognized them. They had been going to Cherry Beach parties for years and were known to be “troublemakers,” he claimed.

Sullivan said the duo hung out until well after the official party was done and then picked a fight. This ended in a scrap between one of the chainsaw duo and a fellow partier. Several people told VICE News that, either during the fight or shortly after, the other member of the chainsaw duo was hit hard on the back of the head with something.

The two men left and returned, bloodied and enraged, with chainsaws—it’s unknown exactly where the chainsaws came from but VICE was told one of the men used them for work—and came after the group. Sullivan said he saw the chainsaw guys coming and quickly worked to get everyone out of the camp, snap the morning dancers out of their stupor so they could run, and tried to de-escalate the situation by directing them towards the equipment of the event’s DJ, Omari Taylor.

“All of a sudden I hear chainsaws revving up from the frickin forest,” said Taylor. “And I hear 'chainsaw chainsaw'! These dudes come out with chainsaws and blood on them. And they're coming towards me and my equipment!”

All I can say is that when something like this happens in Toronto (aka Toronto The Good)* then 2020 is getting truly weird. 

* Actually I'm being mildly sarcastic here. Toronto isn't that good and hasn't deserved its nickname for a while, but despite its problems, it's still much safer than most big US cities. Attacks by chainsaw-wielding, heavily tattooed drunkards are not very common.

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