Toronto police have released a dramatic surveillance video of a brazen shooting that claimed the life of one teenager and injured five others on Friday.
The deadly attack was one of several violent incidents in the Toronto region, including the fatal shooting of a Mississauga man early Saturday morning.
On Sunday, Toronto police found shell casings as they canvassed the area around 87 Amaranth Court, site of the Friday night shootings near Lawrence Avenue West and Dufferin Street. Abdikarim Ahmed Abdikarim, 18, died from a bullet wound to the head, officials confirmed.
Three of the other five youth remain in hospital with non-life-threatening wounds.
No arrests have been made.
Video cameras at the Toronto Community Housing complex in Lawrence Heights show two men walking briskly up to the building. One pulls out a handgun from his jacket and opens fire on the victims, trapped on a porch.
The city's housing agency has installed security surveillance cameras at many of its properties. In 2005, in what was known as the "summer of the gun," the agency added more cameras in several crime-ridden neighbourhoods, including Lawrence Heights.
The dead youth, known as Kareem, was the son of a former professional soccer player in Somalia, according to one media report.
Lawrence Heights has a history of deadly violence, a sore point for residents who labour under a stereotype that overshadows more positive developments in the racially mixed, largely immigrant community.
In 2007, a 23-year-old father of two died of gunshot wounds when he attended a house party. In 2005, bullets fired through an apartment door on Flemington Road killed Leroy Whittaker, 46. Several days earlier, gunfire disrupted a barbecue arranged to honour two young community workers who were gunned down in front of children in 2001.
One of 13 "priority neighbourhoods" identified by the city for additional support for social services and recreations, Lawrence Heights is in the early stages of a renovation similar to Regent Park, another TCHC property, east of the downtown.
Lawrence Heights, known by local residents as "The Jungle" for its cul-de-sacs and other physical barriers to the surrounding community, is further cut off by Allen Road, which bisects the neighbourhood on a north-south axis.
Toronto councillor Howard Moscoe (Ward 15 Eglinton-Lawrence), who represents the area, said yesterday that city planners - together with neighbourhood representatives - are in the early stages of rethinking how to redevelop the area into a mixed-income community with improved services.
Meanwhile, Peel Region homicide detectives appealed for witnesses to a Saturday morning shooting that claimed the life of Winston Watson, 47, of Mississauga, the region's seventh murder victim of 2008.
In other Toronto incidents on the weekend, a man was swarmed by a number of assailants as he left a downtown nightclub early Saturday morning, but he suffered no life-threatening injuries.
Meanwhile, Lui MacCarone, 30, of no fixed address, faces numerous robbery charges after an incident Saturday morning when a man disguised with a ski mask and armed with a handgun walked into a bank on St. Clair Avenue West and demanded cash. The latest incident is linked to nine other bank holdups since December, police say.
