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Toronto rocked with flurry of weekend shootings including murder in busy parking lot

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Residents of Toronto are reeling this week after a whopping 10 separate incidents of gunfire that left four people dead and more injured over the weekend, including a taxi driver, a teenager who was driving down a highway and a man in a busy parking lot in the middle of broad daylight.

The first incident took place shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Saturday near Jane St. and Finch Ave., where a 28-year-old named Kamal Daley was found on the street with gunshot wounds and died at the scene despite life-saving measures.

Just two hours later, around 2:30 a.m., a 36-year-old man identified as Donald Leroy (Smokey) Marson was found deceased in a second shooting incident in an apartment building near Eglinton Ave. W. and Keele.

Then, around 3:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon, a brazen midday shooting took place in the parking lot of a busy SmartCentres shopping plaza near Highway 401 and Weston Road that houses a McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Real Canadian Superstore and more.

A man was found inside his car after being shot, and again, paramedics on site were unable to save him and he was pronounced dead.

Fast forward less than 12 hours, and police responded to the shooting of a 17-year-old while he was driving his car on Highway 427 near Eglinton. This victim survived, though he sustained serious injuries.

Another individual with serious but non-life-threatening injuries then walked into an unnamed Toronto hospital around 5 a.m., police are also reporting. And three hours later, yet another resident was found suffering from gunshot wounds, this time out front of a restaurant near Eglinton Ave.W. and Oakwood. The man in his 30s was taken to hospital.

The violence then moved downtown, with a man shot and injured in public near Wellesley and Parliament Streets just before 9 p.m. Sunday, causing people to run and flee the scene.

Meanwhile, a Beck Taxi driver in Scarborough, who was on the job near Eglinton Ave. E and Pharmacy Ave., crashed into a fence after being shot. He later died in hospital.

The final two incidents of gunfire were reports of shots fired that thankfully did not end up in any reports of injuries or fatalities, though the violence continued Monday afternoon when a man was stabbed multiple times at Yonge and Wellesley around 2 p.m. — just a few intersections away from one of last night's shootings — and shoved into a blue bin. Three suspects were quickly found and arrested.

There were also a few other sketchy and scary happenings in recent days, including someone wielding a knife at Broadview Station on Sunday morning (he escaped through the tunnel) 

Unfortunately, though the metropolis was just named the second-safest city in the world, there have been too many public incidents of gun violence in recent memory, from last year's shooting outside the Bisha Hotel that killed rapper Houdini and injured two others, to this year's shootings in Chinatown, at Sherway Gardens and at Yorkdale Mall.

Toronto Police Service's homicide tracker is now marking 71 murders in the city this year, 38 of them shootings, compared to 60 in 2020 (35 of them shootings). There have been a total of 343 shooting events so far in 2021, per the tool, compared to 414 last year.

Authorities continue to investigate the weekend crimes and are asking anyone who witnessed the events or who has further information to contact them.




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