Death in Chinatown
Double slaying caps lethal month,
Bathed in neon glare, a suspect opened fire on a group of men in Chinatown early Sunday morning, crashing the after-bar bustle with bullets that left two men dead and three more in hospital.
The overnight slayings capped off a particularly lethal month in Toronto, which saw nine homicides in 25 days. Eight of those were shootings, four times the number of shooting deaths that occurred in January 2015, police confirmed.
A fight broke out on Spadina Ave. near Nassau St. at 3:15 a.m., which “prompted this shooting to occur,” Det.-Sgt. Mike Carbone said at a news conference Sunday morning.
Emergency crews rushed to the area after reports of shots fired in front of New Ho King restaurant. Paramedics declared one victim dead on the scene. A second man died in hospital several hours later, police said.
The extent of injuries to three others rushed to a trauma centre is unknown, according to a paramedic spokesperson.
No information on suspects or the victims’ names has been released.
Jason Webb, 39, was lying in bed with his partner in their second-storey apartment a few doors down Spadina Ave. when the sound of gunfire jolted them awake.
“I kept my head down and just waited it out,” he said. Minutes later, he looked out the window and saw pedestrians huddled around one of the victims.
“The police and ambulance people came and performed CPR for quite a while,” he said. Meanwhile, a wounded man sat propped against a storefront nearby, a puddle of blood forming around him, Webb recalled.
Spadina Ave. was shut down for hours between College and Dundas Sts. as forensics teams scoured the sidewalks for evidence, reopening shortly before 2:30 p.m., after firefighters hosed off the scene.
Mitchell Kingsley, a third-year computer engineering student at the University of Toronto, was capping off an “unexciting” night in his second-floor apartment on Cecil St. around 3 a.m., across the street.
“I was lying in bed when I heard what sounded like either trash cans falling over from a raccoon — which happens often enough — or gunshots,” said Kingsley, 20. He said the incident was “extremely startling.”
Carbone, a homicide detective, told media the corridor is usually rife with people spilling out of clubs and into restaurants, many open until 4 a.m. or later. He asked anyone who may have captured the shooting on video — with a security camera or cellphone — to send the footage to police.
The head of the Toronto police officers’ union described Sunday’s “brazen” shooting as yet another example of a worrying spike in gun crime.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time. We’ve been saying that there is an increase in gun violence. This is not a blip, these are not isolated incidents. This is clearly a trend,” said Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack.
As of Jan. 25, the total number of shooting incidents in the city for the month of January was up 100 per cent, to 32 year over year. Shootings that resulted in injury or death shot up 43 per cent, to 22.
Police spokesman Craig Brister avoided speculation on what the apparent spike means for the coming year. “I think we’re too early in the game to be drawing any conclusions,” Brister told the Star.
The number of shooting deaths dropped to 26 last year, from 27 the previous year.
Police said it was too early to tell whether the Sunday’s double homicide was gang-related.
It occurred barely a day after a slaying near Lawrence Ave. and Caledonia Rd. The son-in-law of longtime underworld figure Rocco Zito, 87, turned himself in to police after Zito was shot dead in his home on Playfair Ave. early Friday evening. Domenico Scopelliti, 51, of Toronto, is facing first-degree murder charges.
Aman died of gunshot wounds early on Jan. 24 following an incident at a beauty parlour near McCowan and Ellesmere Rds. Several others were injured in two other incidents that morning.