Three males carrying masks and carrying handguns and an assault rifle entered a pub in Toronto late Friday evening and “opened fireplace indiscriminately,” injuring 12 individuals, the police mentioned.
Six individuals had been taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds, Paul MacIntyre, a police superintendent with the organized crime enforcement unit, mentioned throughout a information convention on Saturday, and 6 had been in any other case injured, together with by damaged or flying glass.
However, he added, “by the grace of God,” there have been no fatalities. The suspects remained at massive, the police mentioned.
It was a typical evening at a neighborhood pub, Superintendent MacIntyre mentioned. Individuals stood on the bar or sat at cubicles, socializing with mates over meals and drinks, because the bar, Piper Arms, on Progress Avenue within the Scarborough district, celebrated its opening evening.
Then at round 10:40 p.m., three males burst into the pub and “simply appeared on the crowd and opened fireplace,” mentioned Superintendent MacIntyre, who reviewed surveillance video of the assault.
Patrons started “ducking for canopy or they’re falling on the ground as a result of they’ve been struck,” he mentioned. Among the patrons tried to flee the taking pictures, fleeing to the basement to cover.
The suspects then obtained right into a car and drove away, the police mentioned.
“When officers arrived on scene, there have been some individuals laying on the ground,” Superintendent MacIntyre mentioned. “There have been others sitting within the sales space or the chairs, sitting the place they’d been shot.”
The taking pictures left behind an “eerie” crime scene, he mentioned, with meals deserted at tables, scattered footwear and purses, shattered glass partitions and “blood all around the ground.”
Calls to the Piper Arms on Saturday weren’t instantly picked up.
Superintendent MacIntyre mentioned that the police had “no thought” the place the suspects had been, and that their motive was nonetheless unclear.
Requested in the event that they posed a hazard to most of the people, he mentioned it was “onerous to say ‘no,’” including: “What we had proper now’s we had three guys stroll right into a pub and open fireplace. So yeah, I’m involved.”
“This was a brazen and reckless act of violence that’s actually shaken our group and town itself,” he mentioned.
In a social media submit early Saturday, Mayor Olivia Chow known as it “an early and ongoing investigation,” including that she was “deeply troubled” by the reviews of the taking pictures.
“My ideas are with the victims and their households,” she mentioned.
