Investigators have released video footage in a bid to identify the killer of 37-year-old tech chief executive Matthew Staikos.
Late Friday afternoon, Toronto Police homicide detective Omar Khan released a short video clip from just before the attack on Monday night showing a four-door Mercedes that appears to be driving down Yorkville Avenue in Toronto’s downtown core near the intersection with Bay Street.
The covered body of a shooting victim lies on a crosswalk at Yorkville Avenue and Bay Street in Toronto on Monday, May 28, 2018.Thomas Campean/The Canadian Press
Mr. Staikos was shot while walking with a friend in Yorkville. Police say the suspect is a black male, five foot 10, with a slim-to-medium build in his mid-20s to late 30s.
Det. Khan said the suspect got out of the passenger seat and shot Mr. Staikos. The driver of the vehicle has not been identified by police, Det. Khan said. Both the driver and suspect drove away in the Mercedes shortly after the attack.
“This was an unprovoked attack on a defenseless man,” Det. Khan told the media as visitation was under way for Mr. Staikos in Belleville, Ont. “We’ve spoken to Mr. Staikos’s family, friends and acquaintances, they’re not only struggling with the loss of their loved one, but they cannot grasp why this would’ve happened.”
Det. Khan said the attacker intended to shoot Mr. Staikos, but police have not determined yet whether they knew each other before the killing, and the motive remains unclear.
Mr. Staikos was an entrepreneur and CEO of Toronto-based Vleepo Inc., described on its website as a “messaging platform that is redefining what group chat should be,” with development offices in Greece. Mr. Staikos co-founded Torch Mobile Inc., a mobile-software developing company that was acquired by Research in Motion Ltd. (now Blackberry Ltd.) in 2009.
His death is part of a recent spike in homicides, many of them in high-traffic downtown intersections. On Wednesday night, Israel Edwards, 18, of Pickering, Ont., was shot and killed at Yonge-Dundas Square.
Less than 24-hours earlier, Venojan Suthesan, a 21-year-old York University student, was shot and killed outside Lester B. Pearson Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. Four people were killed in shootings in the previous week.
Shootings in Toronto are up 11 per cent over last year, at 162 this year as of Sunday − compared with 145 in the same period last year.
Mr. Khan said police are open to the possibility of links between the homicides, but added he does not have information to believe Mr. Staikos’s death is related to the others.