Toronto car rally ends in shooting and the gunfire was all caught on video
Toronto residents are no strangers to unsanctioned car rallies and all of their giant crowds, dangerous stunt driving and highly disruptive antics, but one that just took place over the weekend took things to new levels of terrifying.
Such events became especially bad across the region during COVID, with a huge spike in loud street racing and reckless driving, which included brash incidents of giant gatherings in contravention of lockdown rules, people shooting fireworks out of moving vehicles and literally lighting roads on fire.
But footage from a rally in Scarborough on Sunday night shows things going completely beyond the usual tomfoolery of such meetups, with gunfire ringing out among the crowd, striking and injuring four people in attendance.
Police were called to a parking lot at McCowan Rd. and Milner Ave. around 9 p.m. for multiple reports of gunshots.
New video shows moment that gunfire erupted at unsanctioned Scarborough car rally https://t.co/8OQ0p6NuzZ pic.twitter.com/YKNvZG18RT
— CP24 (@CP24) June 20, 2022
A video shot from a car driving through the lot shows 11 shots ringing out in quick succession, the filmer audibly shocked.
While the clip is short at just 17 seconds, the sound of the shots is loud and clear, and the confusion of those on the scene apparent as some duck and run about between parked cars and others meander casually, apparently unaware of what is happening.
Toronto police told reporters in a presser that the event, which saw hundreds of vehicles, was moved to the location last-minute after the original setting, a parking lot in Pickering, was closed off preemptively by authorities.
While three men and a woman remain in hospital with injuries ranging from minor to severe and life-altering, the suspects remain at large. Twenty other participants were ticketed for driving-related offenses.
SHOOTING:
— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) June 20, 2022
McCowan Rd & Milner
- several callers reporting multiple people shot
- police o/s
- officers located 4 victims suffering from gunshot wounds
- @TorontoMedics took 4 patients to hospital: 2 x life-threatening, 1 serious, 1 minor
- ongoing investigation#GO1165815
^al
Three other shootings took place across the city that same day, putting the four aforementioned individuals, as well as one additional man and two teenaged boys, in hospital.
Another man, aged 24, succumbed to his injuries after being shot in a townhouse at Lotherton Pathway and Caledonia Road that afternoon, but all other victims are expected to pull through as the cops "work to determine any linkages" between a couple of the incidents, which took place within hours of one another.
Mayor John Tory called the weekend violence, which included another shooting Friday night (in which one man was killed and another injured) and one on Saturday, "unacceptable" and "extremely disturbing."
