A Toronto police officer shot an advancing 35-year-old man holding a knife in a Scarborough home last August to protect himself from an attack, the province’s police watchdog has found. “The shooting, I am satisfied, constituted defensive force,” Joseph Martino, the director of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), wrote in his report released Wednesday, concluding that there was no reason to file charges against the officer in connection with the Aug. 1 incident. In the report, the SIU...
OTTAWA - Three childhood friends say they were forced to relive the anguish and fear of losing Kristen French when Correctional Service Canada decided to transfer her killer to a medium-security prison. The women testified at a parliamentary committee today about how it felt to learn that Paul Bernardo was being moved out of his maximum-security prison in late May. Bernardo is serving an indeterminate life-sentence for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 15-year-old French and...
Toronto police are investigating a "dynamic event" that unfolded in Etobicoke Wednesday that saw a woman reportedly being pushed out of a moving vehicle and an officer seriously injured during the arrest of a suspected hit-and-run driver. Officers were initially dispatched to the area of Humber College Boulevard and Highway 27 around 5:30 p.m. following several calls for fail-to-remain collisions. Toronto police spokesperson Const. Laura Brabant said as police were on their way, they...
Nearly one in five households in Ontario is struggling to put food on the table, according to a new study. The recently released report, titled Household food insecurity in Canada, 2022, found that food insecurity experienced by households in Ontario is the highest-ever recorded rate since this data started being collected by Statistics Canada in 2005. According to the study, prepared by a University of Toronto-based household food insecurity research program called PROOF, 18.7 percent of...
A 15-year-old boy is facing several charges for his alleged involvement in an armed carjacking in North York. The incident happened on Nov. 9 in the area of The Donway West and Lawrence Avenue East, according to Toronto police, who said they were called to the scene shortly after 6 p.m. Investigators allege that a woman was standing next to her parked vehicle when she was approached by three suspects who demanded that she hand over her keys. Investigators said one of the suspects was...
A 41-year-old woman from Aurora, Ont. has been found guilty of first-degree murder and arson in relation to a homicide that happened in July 2019. A news release by York Regional Police says that about four years ago, on July 27, 2019, police and Central York Fire Services responded to a fire call at a house on Edward Street at about 1 a.m. The house was fully engulfed in flames when emergency services arrived. Firefighters were able to control the fire about an hour later and discovered...
A 75-year-old woman is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after being struck by a truck near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue. Police say the collision occurred at approximately 10:25 a.m. on Tuesday in the area of Yonge and Soudan streets. It is alleged that the woman was crossing Soudan Street when she was struck by white box truck turning left. The woman remains in hospital with serious injuries. The incident is being investigated by members of Traffic Services. Anyone with...
Halton Regional Police are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying a man wanted in the alleged robbery of a jewelry store in Burlington. According to police, the suspect entered Griffin Jewellery Designs at 5:20 p.m. on October 12. He proceeded to ask the employee to look at rings, and while in possession of an engagement ring, he told the employee that there were people outside with guns. Police say that the suspect then left the store with the ring, which has an estimated value...
OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada's public consultations on the creation of a digital Canadian dollar reveal most respondents are opposed to it. The central bank released its findings Wednesday that show more than 80 per cent of respondents strongly opposed the Bank of Canada researching and building the capability to issue a digital dollar. The vast majority of respondents also said they do not trust the Bank of Canada to issue a secure digital currency. Among the top concerns was privacy,...
A new analysis of traffic and ticket data from King Street is adding weight to a growing sense that the streetcar right-of-way is no longer functioning as intended. The analysis from the University of Toronto's School of Cities found that less than half a percent of daily violations along the King Street Transit Priority Corridor are ticketed by police. The TTC recently revealed that travel times are as bad or worse than when the King Street Transit Pilot was launched in 2017, and said...
A woman is in critical condition after being pulled from a highrise fire in North York Wednesday afternoon. Crews were called to a residential building on York Mills Road, east of the Don Valley Parkway, shortly before 2:30 p.m. Toronto Fire said crews encountered smoke and heavy fire in a unit on the fifth floor. They searched the place and located a female occupant without vital signs. She was immediately brought down, and crews performed CPR. The victim, a woman in her 50s, was...
Durham police have released a 911 audio recording that captured a frantic driver reporting a vehicle travelling the wrong way on Highway 407 over the weekend. "I'm on the 407 going east, and I was nearly hit by a car driving on the 407 east going west," the man is heard telling the operator. When asked if he saw the licence plate, the man said he did not because the vehicle was speeding. He added that he was not able to discern the type of vehicle. "All I could see was this car driving...