WARNING: This story contains references to violent crime and racially motivated attacks.
In the months leading up to a sword attack at a Brandon, Man., high school, a teen wrote in a notebook about “invaders” of Canada — specifically Black and Muslim immigrants — and his mass murder plan.
That’s according to an agreed statement of facts presented in court Tuesday, as the trial for the boy began unexpectedly ahead of schedule in Brandon’s Court of King’s Bench. The day was originally scheduled for a pretrial hearing.
The now 17-year-old, who can’t be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, pleaded not guilty to nine charges related to the June 10, 2025, attack at Neelin High School in the southwestern Manitoba city, including three charges of attempted murder.
He’s also charged with aggravated assault, two counts of assault with a weapon, wearing a disguise with intent and two counts of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
As the charges were read out, the boy became emotional, prompting the judge to ask him if he needed a break.
The 2025 attack left a fellow 15-year-old student — who is Black and whose family is originally from Nigeria — with major injuries, in what police have previously described as a racially motivated crime.
Brandon teen recovering at home after sword attack inside high school
Details of the attack were revealed in court in an agreed statement of facts read by federal Crown prosecutor Hugh Crawley.
Just after 10 a.m. on the morning of the attack, the accused, then a Grade 10 student, told a friend on the phone that he was going through with the plan he’d been formulating for months.
Shortly after 1 p.m., he entered the school wearing black pants and a black trench coat, with a concealed sword and steak knife. He went to a washroom and put on a black “plague” face mask, which featured a long, beak-like nose and covered most of his face.
He then entered the east hallway of the high school, which has about 380 students in grades 9 to 12.
Brandon community cadets are seen outside Neelin High School in Brandon on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)
The victim, a fellow student, stopped to tell the teen he liked the costume. They spoke for a few seconds before the accused stabbed the other teen multiple times in his shoulder, chest, stomach, thigh and arm.
The victim — a 15-year-old Grade 10 student — grabbed at the sword to try to prevent the attack, which severed one of his fingers and cut others.
That victim ran away, with the accused following, then ducked into the administration office.
He passed by the principal, Baseswa Nundu, who thought the victim was playing a joke. Soon after, the accused spotted the principal and chased him down the hall.
Nundu ran into a nearby classroom and held the door closed. The accused stabbed at a small glass window by the door, narrowly missing Nundu’s eye.
The accused then walked down the hallway past several Caucasian students and didn’t react, the agreed statement reads. He saw another student, identified in the statement only as B, and started chasing that student with his sword above his head.
A Caucasian teacher stopped the accused and was unharmed.
According to the agreed statement of facts read by Crawley, the accused entered a classroom and asked if there were “any blacks.” The students told him no and the accused left.
By this point — about five minutes after the accused had entered the school — the principal had ordered a lockdown and the hallways were largely empty.
Seven minutes after the teen entered the school, Brandon police officers arrived. Nearly the entire Brandon police service was sent to the school, the statement of facts says.
The accused asked police to shoot him in the head and refused to drop the sword, the statement says.
Police used a Taser on him twice before he was taken into custody.
Once in custody, the teen shouted, “Why didn’t you shoot me?” and “I wanted you to shoot me.”
The teen “told every officer he encountered that he was intoxicated,” according to the agreed statement of facts, but officers said he showed no signs of this.
More bloodshed intended in Brandon high school sword attack: police
In a videotaped interview with police, played in court Tuesday, the boy told detectives he’d been planning the incident for months and he’d gotten the sword from his home, saying it belonged to his sister. He said he practised with it in the bushes in his yard.
When pressed on his motive, he said he wanted to “go out with a bang” and hoped that would garner praise from certain people.
He admitted to being inspired by a 2015 case in Sweden where a man dressed in black and armed with a sword killed three immigrants before being killed by police.
Sword attack at Brandon high school was racially motivated act of hate, police say
In the interview, the teen told detectives he didn’t attack Caucasian kids in the classroom because they were white.
He also used the term “invaders” to describe people he believed move to Canada but hate the country and do monstrous things to Canadians, the agreed statement of facts says.
“The accused told police the only thing that went different from his plan was that he was not killed by officers,” the statement says.
A day after the attack, Brandon police combed through the accused’s home.
In it, they found several cardboard weapons, in the shape of guns and swords, in the teen’s room.
A black notebook with journal entries dating back to mid-2022 had several entries celebrating Hitler and the Nazis, and others supporting Texas’s right to patrol its borders.
Manitoba Crown hopes to add terrorism provision to charges in 2025 sword attack
The notebooks also contained references to Black and Muslim immigrants, whom he called “invaders,” the statement of facts says.
A Feb. 5, 2022, entry spoke of a hatred for Muslims, saying “with a gun, I’d spree kill as much … as I can.”
A journal entry written 12 days before the Neelin school attack detailed a “mass murder” suicide plan.
Crown prosecutors say a phone seized during a search of the teen’s home contained a file that they plan to argue was the beginning of a manifesto he wrote. (CBC)
Police also seized a tablet and phone belonging to the accused that had files about school shootings, including the 1999 shooting in Columbine high school in Colorado.
In the months leading up to the school attack, there were thousands of searches on the accused’s phone for domestic terrorism, specific incidents of violence and targeted acts of racially motivated violence.
One search included average police response times in Brandon.
More stories from Southwest Manitoba
The phone contained 14,538 photos, including many of guns and other weapons, Hitler and other Nazi imagery, plus some pictures of himself giving a Nazi salute with cardboard weapons.
Several documents on his phone had titles referencing Hitler, white supremacy and school attacks. The phone also had several manifestos written by white nationalists.
Crown prosecutors also said the phone contained a file that they plan to argue was the beginning of a manifesto written by the accused.
Video footage from inside Neelin High School, which has over a dozen video cameras, according to the statement of facts, are expected to be shown in court during the trial.
The accused has been in custody since his arrest. His trial is scheduled to resume in June 2027.
