TORONTO – A Toronto police officer who was shot and seriously injured is expected to survive, the city’s police chief said Wednesday, after gunfire broke out when investigating officers tried to stop a vehicle in a bustling midtown neighbourhood.
The suspected shooter was arrested after an hours-long search, police added.
Chief Myron Demkiw said he was at the hospital on Wednesday night to support the injured officer and his family. Demkiw described the officer’s injuries as serious but non-life-threatening.
In a statement, Demkiw called the shooting “a sobering reminder of the risks our officers face every day as they serve and protect our great city.”
Police say the shooting took place around 5:30 p.m. after officers stopped a vehicle while conducting an investigation near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue. A large police presence converged Wednesday night on a laneway connecting Lillian Street and Redpath Avenue, just southeast of the bustling midtown intersection.
Officers arrested one person at the scene. Two others were later arrested, police said in subsequent updates, including one suspect police believed to be the shooter.
An officer fired a gun at the initial scene, but a suspect was not hit, the province’s police watchdog said. The Special Investigations Unit is mandated to investigate any time an officer fires a gun at a person.
Faith Chelsea, a 27-year-old nurse who lives in a neighbouring apartment complex, looked on from the street while officers filed in and out of the taped-off laneway and cruisers blocked off the street to traffic. Emergency lights reflected off towering apartment buildings surrounding the scene on all sides.
Wednesday night’s violence had her reconsidering whether it was time to move out of the city, she said.
“Toronto has become really scary these days,” she said. “I’m scared just going out at night.”
Coun. Mike Colle, a city councillor and deputy mayor, called the shooting “unnerving” and “disgusting.”
“It just makes you very, very angry,” he said in an interview at the scene.
The shooting led to rush-hour chaos in a busy part of the city, with sirens blaring, a stretch of a major thoroughfare shut down and traffic gridlock.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said Wednesday night that she wished the officer who was shot a “full and quick recovery.”
“Front-line officers put themselves in harm’s way every day, and every officer deserves to go home safe,” she wrote on “X,” the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 2, 2024.
