The first victim was 21-year-old Kartik Vasudev, an international student from India who was shot to death on Thursday outside a Toronto subway station. Two nights later, Elijah Eleazar Mahepath, 35, was slain while running errands downtown.
Toronto Police said both were killed by a man who chose his victims at random in unprovoked attacks – and that the killer planned to strike again. On Tuesday, they announced that they had charged Richard Jonathan Edwin, 39, with two counts of first-degree murder. Police say they do not yet know much about the suspect or his motivations. He has no criminal record.
The investigation connected the homicides to one person, officers said, and on Sunday, they made an arrest in a downtown Toronto rooming house where an “arsenal” of guns and boxes of ammunition were strewn around the floor.
“Lives were saved because of this arrest,” Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said at a news conference on Tuesday. He added that “we can reasonably conclude that the quick work of our investigators has prevented a further loss of life.”
Police did not say if they found evidence of a plan for more attacks other than the large weapons cache.
“There were going to be more victims,” Chief Ramer said. “When, I don’t know, but he had an arsenal at home.”
Police said both victims were “visible minorities,” but it is unclear whether hate was involved.
No words were exchanged before either attack, both of which occurred in the city’s downtown core. “We’re not sure whether the shooter was actually able to gain face-to-face sightlines of either one of these victims‚” Detective Sergeant Terry Browne of the homicide squad said.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate on whether someone was targeted based on their background or ethnicity,” he added. “... Certainly from what we saw, any interaction with the shooter and the victims was very, very quick and brief.”
The suspect acquired his guns legitimately. “He was lawfully in possession of the weapons,” Chief Ramer said.
Two rifles were among the weapons police seized. One of these long guns “would have been able to cause great carnage – if used,” Det. Sgt. Browne said.
Mr. Vasudev was killed last Thursday around 5 p.m. at the Sherbourne subway station. He was a marketing student at Seneca college student who was from India.
The Indian consulate in Toronto told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Vasudev’s family has been granted visas should they choose to come to Canada to repatriate the body. Friends of Mr. Vasudev and other international students gathered in his memory downtown at Nathan Phillips Square last weekend.
The square is outside City Hall, where Toronto’s mayor issued a statement on Tuesday promising to support actions to prevent violence. “I will continue to work with Chief James Ramer and our police service to ensure they have the resources they need to keep our city safe,” John Tory said.
The second shooting occurred Saturday on Dundas Street near George Street at 7 p.m.
Mr. Mahepath, 35, was also a Toronto resident. “His family is devastated,” Det.-Sgt. Browne said. He added that the victim “was just coming from running errands like all of us do. Grocery shopping, on his way to his next location.”
“For reasons that are unclear, and which may never be clear, his life was taken,” the detective said.
Police have thanked citizens, and especially regional mass-transit organizations, for supplying them with evidence. Authorities say they have volumes of video footage related to the killings, including scenes of the gunman going from his residence to one of the attacks and then back home again.
Residents of a rooming house at Bloor Street and Spadina Avenue told reporters they knew little about the suspect before hearing tactical officers storm the building to arrest him.
The fatal shootings of the two men defy rational explanation, police said. “We have nothing to suggest he knew either one of them,” Det. Sgt. Browne said. He added that “it was a chance meeting, a chance passing, and for reasons that are only known to the suspect, these two people who were victimized on that day are now both dead.”
Canada’s largest city has dealt with random killings before.
In 2015, Mark Moore was convicted in the shooting deaths of several men he did not know. In 2018, a man used a rented cargo van to kill 11 people on Yonge Street.
In July of that year, a gunman killed two young women and injured 13 other people on the Danforth before killing himself.
After the violence that night along Toronto’s busy Greektown restaurant strip, victims’ families called for a phase-out of private handgun ownership. Since then, the federal Liberal government has focused its gun-control efforts on prohibiting hundreds of rifle models and by pledging $1-billion to help provinces and territories establish handgun prohibitions. Premiers in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have ruled out doing this.
With a report from Patrick White
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Colin Freeze
Uday Rana