Toronto police say the public is in no “significant danger” following a spate of shootings over the weekend that left two people dead and several more injured.
Investigators said Monday there were six shootings throughout the city between Friday and Sunday nights.
The first took place in the city’s northwest around 10:40 p.m. Friday when two men were shot, one of them fatally, police said.
The second incident occurred a few hours later, around 3:20 a.m. Saturday, police said. A man with multiple gunshot wounds then walked into a 7-Eleven convenience store, they said.
That afternoon, police said two teens aged 15 and 17 were shot multiple times and seriously injured while near a playground in the west end. Both are expected to survive, they said.
On Sunday afternoon, a 43-year-old man in north Toronto was taken to hospital after suffering multiple gunshot wounds, police said.
Police said the fifth shooting happened minutes later, and a man died at the scene. He has since been identified as 24-year-old Jaron Williams of Toronto.
Four suspects were seen leaving the area by car immediately after the shooting, police said. The vehicle is described as a beige or champagne-coloured Chevrolet Equinox.
Homicide investigators are looking into potential links between the fourth and fifth shootings, police said.
The sixth shooting took place in the east end around 8 p.m. Sunday, leaving three men and one woman with gunshot wounds, police said.
Toronto police Supt. Steven Watts said that incident occurred at an unsanctioned car meet in a parking lot just north of Highway 401.
He says the event was initially set to take place in nearby Durham Region but moved west to Toronto.
While he declined to comment on any potential connections between the six incidents, Watts says he doesn’t feel the general public is in any danger as a result of them.
The Toronto police union called for better funded police services and lamented the “untold trauma” such incidents leave behind, for families, friends, witnesses and first responders.
“This level of violence has an inexplicable toll on everyone involved,” the Toronto Police Association Board said in a statement on the weekend shootings.
“Our communities want a regular police presence that doesn’t ebb and flow with crimes rates.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 20, 2022.
