‘I SAW PEOPLE BEING HIT BY BULLETS’ Witnesses recount horror of deadly rampage before the gunman died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound
It was the perfect night to be on a patio in Toronto’s Greektown — a warm summer evening, skies finally clear after a day of rain.
The bustling stretch of Danforth Ave. around the parkette named for Alexander the Great is the street at its most vibrant, a place where children play near the stone fountain, where locals eat takeout french fries sprinkled with feta and sip after-dinner cappuccinos.
It’s the heart of the community, and it’s where a shooter on Sunday began a brazen attack that left two dead and 13 others injured. Sources say the attacker also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound,although the SIU would not confirm the details of his death.
The deceased victims are 18-year-old Reese Fallon, from the Beach neighbourhood, and a 10-year-old girl who has not been identified.
The Special Investigations Unit identified the gunman as 29-year-old Faisal Hussain of Toronto. His family said in a statement Monday that he suffered from severe mental health challenges, including depression and psychosis.
The crack of gunshots sounded just before 10 p.m. on Sunday, startling Andrew Mantzios, who had been having coffee with friends in the parkette at Danforth and Logan Aves. He was standing by the fountain, set to leave.
The shooter was tall, skinny, dressed in black. Witnesses said he carried a bag and wore a black ball cap. “He had this horrible look on his face like a dog baring his teeth,” Mantzios said.
Someone yelled for everyone to get down. “Everybody was falling down and somebody pushed me,” Mantzios said. “I saw people being hit by bullets and falling.” The shooter kept firing. “A lady tried to run away and tripped and fell by the tree next to the fountain,” Mantzios said. The shooter turned, took two steps and shot her “point-blank.”
Ali Demircan also saw the woman by the tree. He was sitting with three friends on a small stone bench in the parkette when the shots rang out. A woman bleeding from her arm approached him looking for help, but the shooter began firing another round and everyone fled, he said.
“When I turned back, there she was lying behind a small tree on Logan Ave. People were trying to help her and do CPR,” Demircan said. Another victim was down on the patio of the coffee shop that borders the parkette, witnesses said.
Lenny Graf had been having dinner at a restaurant nearby with his wife, their 9-year-old son and their son’s friend when the kids asked to go play at the fountain. The gunfire began soon after they arrived.
“I thought it was firecrackers, except that people started to run away, and crouch down and scream,” Graf said.
He looked up and saw his son huddled near the fountain, about 10 feet from the shooter. He frantically searched for his son’s friend, but could not see her. “I thought, OK, what do I do? I crouch down, I get shot? I run, I get shot?”
The attacker appeared to be shooting at random, like someone in a video game, Graf said. “He was very relaxed. It was pretty disturbing.”
Graf took his son and fled to an alley that runs behind the busi- nesses on the Danforth, seeking refuge through the back door of the Friendly Greek restaurant, where he was reunited with his wife and son’s friend.
At Logo, a bar across the street from the parkette, patrons on the patio turned to see what the noise was. Someone yelled: “They’re shooting at us — run inside.”
Mantzios said the shooter crossed the street, fired a few shots, then crossed back to the north side, reloaded, and continued walking west. In the aftermath, there were five or six people on the ground, he said.
Avideo posted on social media shows a man walking briskly along Danforth, carrying a gun. He stops, turns and fires into a storefront.
The shooter passed the TD Bank and a fruit stand, which were closed for the night, then fired near Mezes restaurant, where patrons ran for cover. A Mezes waiter was shot in the hand and taken to hospital, a restaurant employee told the Star.
Moving further west, the shooter passed a shoe store, a gelato shop, a convenience store. Then he approached Caffe Demetre, a popular dessert shop near Chester Ave. that is open late. He stood at the window and fired through the glass at the people inside, witnesses said. A woman named Diana who said she works at Demetre told CP24 she was serving a family that included the child who was shot. (The Star was not able to independently verify the location where the child was shot.) Diana said she saw a gunman aim at the restaurant and fire about three shots through the patio doors.
At exactly 10 p.m., a surveillance camera at Burger Stomper captured the shooter walking past the restaurant, which had closed for the night, owner Nick Balkos said.
Balkos was in his office above the burger shop when he heard gunshots. He looked out the window and saw a man with a gun running across the street to the south side of Danforth, his weapon aimed at the Second Cup. “He fired six to 10 shots into the store,” Balkos said. “Unbelievable.”
Jessica Young, a Second Cup employee who was not working at the time but was visiting a friend at the coffee shop, said the commotion outside did not immediately cause alarm. “I heard a loud pop sound. I thought someone had maybe dropped something, but then I saw three of the customers that were sitting outside start running,” she said.
Then she saw the shooter through the window. She said he pointed his gun in her direction and fired through the glass. She ducked and escaped unharmed.
The shooter continued west, now on the south side of Danforth. He passed a tailor, a dry cleaner, a florist.
Simryn Fenby said her uncle encountered the man in black near 7Numbers, an Italian restaurant at Danforth Ave. and Bowden St.
“This guy was walking towards him and told him, ‘I’m not going to shoot you’ and then told him to get out of his way,” Fenby said. “And then fired at two people coming out of 7Numbers.”
Other neighbourhood residents said the shooter entered the Italian restaurant through a side door and shot two people.
Fenby’s uncle, who did not want to be named, ducked behind a car and heard four or five shots fired, she said. The shooter then fled the area.
Half a block south of 7Numbers on Bowden, a quiet treelined residential street, a shootout erupted between the attacker and police. The shooter fled and was found dead of a gunshot wound on Danforth Ave.
Danforth was closed between Broadview and Carlaw Aves. until after 5 p.m. Monday as investigators pieced together what happened and collected evidence. When the police tape came down, life resumed, but not without signs of the carnage that had taken place. The shattered windows at Caffe Demetre were boarded up. Cracks spidered from bullet holes in the windows at Second Cup. Workers in white hazmat suits sprayed chemicals on the ground and scrubbed at the blood stains on the pavement in front of the statue of Alexander the Great.
And at an evening vigil at Calvary Church on Pape Ave., people came out to show they are not afraid.