Another victim on the Rexdale murder map

Feb 25, 2019 | News

By Kateryna Horina

A man is dead following a shooting in Rexdale on Sunday afternoon, the city’s tenth homicide of the year.

Toronto Police arrived at the scene at John Garland Blvd. and Kendleton Dr. just before 2 p.m. to find two male victims suffering from gunshot wounds.

Both victims were rushed to the hospital where one of them was pronounced dead from his injuries, police said.

Not only is it the tenth homicide of the year in Toronto, it’s also the third fatal shooting in Rexdale so far.

Marcell Wilson, a co-founder and co-executive director of One by One movement, advocating against gun violence, said the situation is terrible.

“We’re only into the second month in and we are at ten murders already in the city, so hopefully we don’t have the same problem or break the record of murders that we had last year,” Wilson said.

According to Toronto Police statistics, there were 41 shootings in Toronto in 2019, with seven of them leading to death and 22 resulting in injuries.

Five of those shootings happened in the Rexdale area, with three of them being fatal.

The statistics also show that there were 428 shootings in 2018, with 51 of them leading to death and 185 resulting in injuries.

Forty-nine of them happened in the Rexdale area, with eight being fatal and 16 leading to injuries.

According to Toronto Police, this makes 23 division, which includes Rexdale, has more shootings and victims than the any other division in the GTA.

“It’s pretty simple math that wherever people are marginalized and there’s poverty, there is going to be a high crime rate,” said Wilson. “So what needs to happen is there needs to be social programming put in place, and youth outreach, and mentorship to these young kids who feel lost.”

“We hope the government is watching. We hope that the city is watching and we hope that people that live outside of these communities care, and the more they care, the more we can do to stop this problem,” Wilson said.

Below is a map showing fatal shootings that happened near Humber College’s North Campus over the last two years.