Canada Valentine’s Day massacre foiled in Halifax area.

Canada Valentine’s Day massacre foiled in Halifax area. (WFP).

A senior police official said on Friday police foiled a plot by two suspects who were planning on going to a mall and killing as many people as they could before killing themselves on Valentines Day in Halifax.

The official told The Associated Press the suspects were on a chat stream and were apparently obsessed with killing and death and had many photos of mass killings. Police and other officials said it was not related to Islamic terrorism.

The official said one of the two suspects, a 23-year-old American woman from Geneva, Illinois, was arrested at Halifax’s airport and confessed to the plot. The official said she pre-wrote a number of pronouncements to be tweeted after her death.

The official said the 19-year-old male shot himself to death after police surrounded his parent’s home. The official said after police were tipped off about the plot they surrounded his home. Police saw his parents leave the house and called the man. As the man told police that he didn’t have any guns and he was on his way out of the house he shot himself, the official said.

Police received information from the public on Thursday morning of a potential significant weapons-related threat. The information suggested a 19-year-old Halifax-area man and a 23-year old woman from Geneva, Ill., had access to firearms, Brennan said.

“We received a threat that individuals were planning on targeting a public venue in Halifax, to go there and commit mass killings of civilians and to ultimately kill themselves,” Brennan, the senior Mountie in the province, said in a phone interview Friday night.

“Given the public venue that we believe was to be targeted, there was the potential for significant casualties and injury to citizens.” Brennan would not say which venue was being targeted.

He says two other male suspects, ages 20 and 17, were also involved, although he says investigators were still trying to determine what their role was.

Brennan said firearms have been seized, although he could not say what kind, how many, or where the weapons were seized.

“The weapons seized had the ability to inflict a lot of casualties if used in a populated area,” said Brennan.

Brennan said the 20-year-old man and 23-year-old woman were arrested around 2 a.m. at the Halifax airport. He said the woman was arriving on a plane and the man was there to meet her.

The 17-year-old boy was arrested around 11 a.m. in the Halifax area, he said. Brennan said all three suspects remain in police custody and there's no word on charges.

Brennan would not characterize the alleged plot as terrorism, saying the views of the individuals "were not based in religion or culture."

"(These) people were of the same destructive mindset," he said, although he would not elaborate on the nature of their mindset. Brennan said he's "extremely confident" that all participants in the incident have been arrested. "We're very, very confident that we got all those that we needed to get," he said. "There is no further threat... to the general public."