Tech entrepreneur shot dead in ritzy Toronto neighbourhood
MATTHEW STAIKOS ‘A PROMINENT GREEK AND A SUCCESSFUL CANADIAN CITIZEN’
The execution of technology entrepreneur Matthew Staikos in Toronto’s upscale Yorkville shopping district on Monday night was over in a matter of seconds.
Staikos, 37, who once sold a start-up company to fabled Canadian phone giant BlackBerry, was walking east along Yorkville Avenue, approaching Bay Street, around 11:30 p.m. Behind him were the shops and bars of Yorkville, full of people enjoying a hot summery evening. In front of him across the street was the Four Seasons Hotel, where his father Nick, a property developer from the Quinte region of eastern Ontario, has a residence.
Security footage from the condo building on the corner shows Staikos passing by, reportedly in the company of another man, looking relaxed and chatting. Parked beside them was a silver or grey fourdoor Mercedes, which police are seeking to identify. Tamara Cherry of CTV News reported seeing surveillance video from this condo that shows a man get out the passenger side of this car after Staikos and the other man passed. A few seconds later, the same camera shows him jump back in, and the car speed off.
In that brief time, police say this man approached Staikos from behind and shot him dead, reportedly in the head, and left him lying there, where he died, in front of Pusateri’s Fine Foods. News reports indicate witnesses heard between three and five shots, one of which went across the street — across two sidewalks and four lanes of traffic — before shattering the glass door of the furrier Herman Sellers Gough, and lodging in the wall near the desk where the staff sits.
The shooter is described by police as black, about 5-foot-10, with a medium build. There is no description of the driver. Given the high concentration of security cameras in the area, police are likely to have other images of the car as it arrived and left.
The shocking killing follows soon after another brazen nighttime assassination further downtown, in the underground parking ramp of a skyscraper, where Jaiden Jackson, 28, was chased by three men in a car after he left a party at the Pick 6ix restaurant, co-owned by the rapper Drake. They caught him as he ran down the ramp and fell, and shot him 20 times where he lay.
There is no indication the events are related, but Mayor John Tory, responding to this and other recent gun violence, said the city will have to “redouble our efforts” to keep Toronto safe.
An autopsy on Staikos was to have taken place on Wednesday, but police said they have nothing yet to release about the results.
Staikos was not married but reportedly had a long-term girlfriend and lived in a condo several blocks south of the murder scene.
He has lately been working to launch Vleepo, a messaging app company, which has headquarters in Toronto and Larissa, iGreece. An online profile describes him as proud of his Greek heritage, and making efforts to learn the language and culture.
Staikos studied mechanical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, and with his older brother George founded the company Torch Mobile in 2008, which was quickly bought in 2009 for an undisclosed price by Research In Motion, later BlackBerry, as part of its effort to improve its internet browser in order to compete with Apple and Google.
There was no answer at his parents’ residences Wednesday, and his family were reportedly gathered at his midtown Toronto home.
A former colleague at BlackBerry said he was highly regarded in the company, charming and friendly, with a clean reputation and none of the brashness that sometimes characterizes young men who get rich quick in the tech industry.
“He was a prominent Greek and a successful Canadian citizen. He made us all proud of his unbounded love for Greece and his great achievements in Canada,” said Greece’s Ambassador to Canada Dimitrios Azemopoulos, in a statement posted online.
“I met him at the time when he was trying to become successful. I immediately realized that he will make it. But I never imagined that he would leave us so quickly, so unfairly, so violently.”