Witnesses said the soldier was gunned down by a man dressed all in black with a scarf over his face.

“I looked out the window and saw a shooter, a man dressed all in black with a kerchief over his nose and mouth and something over his head as well, holding a rifle and shooting an honor guard in front of the cenotaph point-blank, twice,” Tony Zobl, 35, told the Canadian Press news agency.

Zobl said he witnessed the incident from his fourth-floor window directly above the National War Memorial, a 70-foot, arched granite cenotaph, or tomb, with bronze sculptures commemorating World War I.

“The honor guard dropped to the ground, and the shooter kind of raised his arms in triumph holding the rifle,” Zobl said.

Specifically, [Couture-Rouleau] may have been responding to a September request by ISIS’s English-speaking spokesman to “kill a disbelieving American or European … or an Australian, or a Canadian … and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”…

As the beige sedan tore toward the group just as they stepped off the sidewalk, an unidentified woman in the trio was able to jump clear, Quebec media report.

The brunt of the collision was taken by Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, a 28-year CF veteran who died of his injuries Tuesday. A second victim, who was not in uniform, was less severely hurt and remains in stable condition in hospital…

But as shocked bystanders dialed 911, the fleeing Mr. Rouleau did the same.

In the opening seconds of his attempted escape, the SQ has confirmed, he called a 911 dispatcher to claim responsibility for the attack and boast he had done it “in the name of Allah.”

As a result of attacks Wednesday and Monday against soldiers in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., Armed Forces personnel in Quebec have been ordered not to wear their uniforms in public unless they are conducting operations or commuting to work by car…

With two incidents in three days targeting uniformed military personnel, the military command is calling for increased vigilance from its members…

Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed Monday when a radicalized convert to Islam drove into him with his car. A solider guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa was shot by a gunman Wednesday morning and died of his injuries.

This is Canada’s first trial by fire of this type in a long time. We’ve fought in wars abroad and had terrorism at home, but this is something else. Though, at press time, the identity and motive of the attackers is not yet known, the profile of the attack certainly fits the pattern we have seen all over the world. Someone has just sent us a statement intended to shock and horrify us. And while we are all certainly shocked, we have not been cowed. Oct. 22 will be a day of infamy in our history books, but it’s also a day that we can be proud of. When our seat of government was attacked, we fought back, and fought well…

[O]n the whole, things worked. When our capital city was attacked, police officers, soldiers and security guards stayed calm and focused. The seat of government was defended and the threat eliminated. Members of Parliament calmly took shelter and stayed out of the way. The media did their jobs and kept us informed. And, as shown by an incredible picture taken after a Canadian soldier was gunned down at the War Memorial, everyday citizens joined with soldiers and first responders in (tragically unsuccessful) effort to keep that soldier alive.

Wednesday was a terrible day. There will be more hard days to come. But Canadians can be proud of themselves, their government and especially their military and first responders. They just had their trial by fire. They passed.