RCMP cordon off a crime scene using police tapeJOHN LEHMANN
A machete-wielding man killed by police outside a Scarborough bank was shot at by two officers, the Special Investigations Unit confirmed Friday night.
At around 12:45 p.m, "Toronto Police Service officers responded to the TD Bank located at 2428 Eglinton Avenue East to deal with a suspicious male," the agency said in a release.
"At some point outside of the bank, a male officer and a female officer each discharged their firearms and the man was fatally struck."
Police said earlier they were summoned to the bank by a 911 call from inside about a man waving a machete.
Witnesses said later the man was confronted by police outside the building, on the southeast corner of Eglinton Avenue and Kennedy Road, and ordered to drop the weapon.
Instead he advanced toward them, they said, at which point the officers opened fire.
The man, believed to have been in his 50s, was rushed to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre without vital signs and pronounced dead.
Television pictures showed the black-handled machete he had been swinging laying on the ground.
The SIU is the civilian-staffed provincial agency that examines all police-civilian interactions involving death, serious injury or allegations of sexual assault.
This was the second time in 36 hours it had invoked its mandate in Toronto.
On Thursday morning police shot and wounded a 23-year-old man as a house was being searched on Wainfleet Drive, also in Scarborough.
Struck in the leg, he is recovering.
On Sunday, two armed robbers stormed into another TD branch on St. Clair Avenue, on the west side of Toronto, and two people were shot and injured.
Both suspects have since been arrested and charged with multiple offences, including attempted murder.
It was unclear, however, whether Friday's fatal shooting stemmed from any effort by the slain man to rob the Scarborough bank.