Steph Deschamps / December 19, 2022
Five people were killed and another injured Sunday in a shooting in the eastern Canadian suburb of Toronto, police said.
The suspect is also believed to have died after exchanges of fire with law enforcement, local police chief Jim MacSween told reporters, noting that the shooting took place in an apartment building.
The injured person was transported to the hospital and his life is not believed to be in danger.
In the early evening, police were called to shots fired and "once they arrived at the scene, the officers were confronted with a terrible scene with several people already dead," Jim MacSween told reporters, according to Canadian media.
Police are now looking into the motive for the killing and whether there was a connection between the victims and the suspect, a man whose identity has not been specified.
The suspect is believed to have acted alone. As for the victims, they were found in different apartments in the building, which is located in Vaughan, a city located about 30 kilometers north of Toronto, Ontario.
Residents of the building were evacuated immediately and dozens of ambulances and police were on the scene by evening, Canadian media said.
Although Canada is less familiar with mass shootings than its American neighbor, it is experiencing a resurgence of violent acts of this type, which has prompted the authorities to recently legislate a ban on handguns.
In April 2020, a gunman disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in Nova Scotia, in the east of the country, the worst mass shooting in Canada.
In September, a man killed 11 people and wounded 18 others with a knife, mostly in a remote aboriginal community in central Canada.