For more than five months, Vancouver's Stanley Cup riot was blamed on hooligans and anarchists -- maybe the notorious Black Bloc.
Police Chief Jim Chu said back in June that the people who flipped and burned cars, smashed windows and looted stores included "a number of young men and women disguised as Canucks fans who were actually criminals and anarchists."
But when the names of the first 25 suspects were released this week, the list read more like a cross-section of middle-class suburbia.
One of them was 20-year-old Sophie Laboissonniere, a former Miss World Canada contestant who has been charged with participating in a riot and breaking into London Drugs.
Miss World Canada organizer Katherine Grefner told Â鶹´«Ã½ that Laboissonniere, who was named Miss Congeniality in last year's Miss Coastal Vancouver pageant, was a "very vivacious" contestant, "one of the best spoken ones that we had."
"I think that she's a very good person," she added.
Another name on the list was 19-year-old Dylan Long, a former New Westminster Salmonbellies Junior A lacrosse player who has been charged with participating in a riot.
"He is a polite, respectful hard-working kid," said his former coach Ray Porcellato. "All the qualities you'd want in a young man. ... I don't know what happened that night or what went down. I don't know anything about it."
Most of the 25 facing a total of 61 charges for their actions the night of June 15 are in their late teens or early 20s. One, at 17 years old, is a young offender, while the oldest suspect is 33. Nine of the suspects are from Surrey, while eight are from Vancouver. One is from Seattle.
With the charges hitting closer to home than even the police chief suspected, experts are attempting to explain what might have spawned the riot.
Stephen Hart, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser University, told CTV: "Adolescence and early adulthood is a time when a lot of people are affected by watching their peers participate in bad behaviour or having peer influence, so young people may be more prone to crowd behaviour than older people."
Of course, this week's list may be just the tip of a legal iceberg.
Vancouver Police have recommended a total of 163 charges against 60 suspects so far, and with the 25 charged this week Crown prosecutors are still reviewing the recommendations for the remaining 35.
Investigators have said that as many as 700 people could ultimately face charges, and that the investigation could take up to two years to complete.
With a report from CTV's British Columbia Bureau Chief Sarah Galashan
