The last surviving member of a Vancouver family is searching for accountability and systemic change after the Lapu-Lapu Day festival tragedy.
Alejandro Samper, whose mother, Glitza Maria, father, Daniel, and sister, Glitza Daniela, were among the 11 people killed in the vehicle-ramming attack on the Filipino street festival in April, plans to join a class-action lawsuit against the city, health authority, and the suspect.
“I’m still very broken. I’m still crying, grieving. But also with a very strong sense of purpose,” Samper told CityNews.
While his heart may never recover, Samper is grateful for his friends and community, who stood by his side over the darkest six months of his life.
Now his focus has turned to seeking answers to how the tragedy was allowed to occur in the first place.
“Their only job was to keep us safe, and they failed to do that.”
Samper plans to join a suit that alleges the suspect, Kai-Ji Adam Lo, had deteriorating mental health before the festival, but his mental health-care team failed to act in time.
Lo, the City of Vancouver, and Vancouver Coastal Health Authority are named as defendants.
“With the class action lawsuit, I’m really hoping that the Crown Counsel, the health-care system, the police — they start communicating more with each other.”
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Samper believes there has not been enough focus on the shortcomings that led up to that fateful night.
“Why did the doctor allow this person to just walk in the streets?”
Despite everything he has been through in the past six months, Samper still believes in the country that his family came to 25 years ago in search of a better life. He’s committed to fighting for the dream his parents had for his sister and him.
“My parents sacrificed a very comfortable life there — our friends, our family, our community — for a better future for me and my sister. But now they’re all gone and I’m not going to sit around, cross my arms and not do anything. I’m going to fight the system to see change until I die,” said Samper.
“It’s my mission.”