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On the morning of Monday, June 22, 2026, a shooting took place outside the headquarters of Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub and other pornographic websites, in the Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood of Montreal. Three people died. One of them was a police officer. And the neighbourhood, one of the most multicultural in the city, was brought to a standstill for hours. ## How It Started At 11:35 in the morning, police received an emergency call. A citizen had seen a gun barrel being pointed out of a window at the Hilton Garden Inn on Décarie Avenue and heard gunshots. When officers arrived, they found the shooter on the street and gunfire was exchanged. Around 12:30 p.m., the Quebec government issued an emergency alert. Residents in the area were told to stay indoors. Saint Joseph's Oratory was evacuated, sections of the Décarie Expressway were closed, and metro service was disrupted. A local resident described to the press officers crouching behind cars with guns drawn, followed shortly by the arrival of a SWAT team. The neighbourhood went completely quiet. The alert was lifted around 3 p.m. ## Who Died **Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, police officer** Benredouane had been with the SPVM since 2021. His death marked the first time in more than two decades that a Montreal police officer was killed in the line of duty. He grew up in the same neighbourhood where he died. The police statement was straightforward: *"His death is an enormous loss for our organization. His sense of duty and commitment will forever remain in our memories."* A second female officer was critically wounded but is now in stable condition. **Michel Mizrahi, 68, civilian** Mizrahi was an Israeli-Canadian citizen. Described by those who knew him as a grandfather with a "heart of gold". The circumstances surrounding his death are still being investigated, and that's honestly one of the most sensitive aspects of this whole story. Videos circulating on social media appeared to show a police officer shooting a civilian. Quebec's Domestic Security Minister Ian Lafrenière acknowledged the footage but asked people not to share it, making clear that this specific point is now in the hands of the province's police watchdog. Nobody has officially confirmed what happened to Mizrahi so far. ## The Shooter Quebec's coroner identified the suspect as Seth Scott Hatfield, 25, from Lethbridge, Alberta. The University of Lethbridge confirmed he was a student there, studying philosophy, and he had appeared on the 2026 Dean's Honour List. The profile that emerged in the days that followed is disturbing, but also fairly recognizable within a certain pattern of online radicalization. Hatfield's digital trail includes an account on a photo-sharing platform with images of Patrick Bateman from *American Psycho* and a screenshot of Metallica's *Kill 'Em All* album, a title that echoes the closing phrase of the manifesto he left behind. A deleted YouTube page showed a playlist filled with videos from a conspiracy theorist and former Infowars host. None of that is necessarily alarming in isolation. Together, it tells a story. ## The Manifesto The document runs 104 pages and was created two weeks before the attack. The metadata shows it was authored by a user named Seth Hatfield on June 8, 2026. The content blends incel ideology with other belief systems in a fairly chaotic way. It criticizes capitalism, Zionism, liberalism, and online pornography. Listed targets include the pornography industry, sex traffickers, real estate investors, pedophiles, and law enforcement. Pickup artists and plastic surgeons also appear on the list. It's the kind of document that extremism researchers recognize immediately, a patchwork of grievances organized around a central misogynistic ideology. Analysts describe the manifesto as a blend of incel beliefs mixed with elements of Marxist ideology. That's honestly less contradictory than it sounds. There's a strand within the incel movement that rejects capitalism specifically because it believes the market has "commodified" relationships. ## The Connection to Aylo The shooter appeared to be targeting the sixth floor of the building across from the hotel, where Aylo employees were working. The most widely reported theory is that he chose that specific part of the city because of its proximity to the offices of Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek. Aylo issued a statement offering condolences and thanking first responders, confirming that none of its employees were physically harmed. The company said it would not speculate on motive while the investigation is ongoing. A reasonable position, given the circumstances. ## The Investigations The BEI, Quebec's independent body that investigates serious injuries and deaths involving police, assigned ten investigators to the case. The Sûreté du Québec is running a parallel criminal investigation. Lethbridge police are also assisting Quebec authorities, and a high-risk operation was carried out at Hatfield's residence. There are at least two open threads: what motivated the attack, and the exact circumstances of Mizrahi's death. ## The Political Response Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was "horrified" and paid tribute to the officers' response. Quebec Premier Christine Frechette asked that the provincial flag be flown at half-mast. Montreal's mayor did the same with city flags. The CN Tower in Toronto dimmed its lights for five minutes every hour in honour of the fallen officer. These are the expected gestures. What comes next in terms of actual policy around online radicalization and misogynistic extremism remains to be seen. ## A Pattern That Isn't New Anyone who follows these cases will recognize the structure: a young man with signs of social isolation, heavy consumption of extremist content online, a manifesto written weeks in advance, a target connected to a specific ideological fixation. The Côte-des-Neiges attack draws unavoidable comparisons to the École Polytechnique massacre in 1989, also in Montreal, also driven by misogyny, and to the 2018 Toronto van attack carried out by someone tied to the same incel movement. Different incidents, but the same thread running through them. The investigation is still in its early stages. A lot of questions, about what brought Hatfield to Montreal, about who shot Mizrahi, about what authorities knew or could have detected beforehand, will likely take weeks to answer. If they get answered at all.