One 17-year-old boy dead. Four other teens — two 17-year-olds, a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old — and a woman in her 50s suffered wounds in the rampage.
The night of bloody gunfire on Darcel Ave. — in Mississauga’s Morning Star-Goreway Drives area — came on a beautiful late summer evening as kids played, a birthday party took place and music video was being filmed. It couldn’t have been more perfect.
This changed at 6:20 p.m. “It sounded like fireworks going off,” said one woman. But there were no fireworks. It was gunfire from semi-automatic weapons.
A heavily armed police officer patrols around a building following a shooting that left one teen dead and four other people injured.
“There were multiple individuals armed with semi-automatic weapons and there were a lot of rounds that have been fired in this complex,” said an outraged Peel Police Chief Chris McCord. And the damage was significant. “They fired at will,” said a neighbour. “It was crazy.” McCord said when police arrived, the first thing they found in a parkette behind the building was the 17-year-old boy who was killed.
“The officers tried to provide life saving measures to try to help this young person,” said McCord. But it was too late. When officers went inside the building, the found the wounded.
Officers are hard at work trying to determine who was behind this gutless attack on a neighbour in broad daylight with children playing and families vulnerable. “All of the individuals have fled the scene,” said McCord.
Peel’s Emergency Task Force officers cleared the area and looking under every bench and in every balcony as they searched for anyone who might be hiding.
The whole thing seemed surreal. As the sun set and a full moon rose, displaced families with their children were out on the sidewalks as armed police scoured the area searching for what McCord rightfully called the “culprits.” It takes a special kind of evil to shoot into a crowd of innocent people and children.
Sources say it was fortunate that more children were not hurt. “I just walked by there with my kids,” said Ade Thompson. “We could have walked right into that.” And others did find themselves in the middle of it. “There is a concern for public safety,” said McCord. “When you have people armed with weapons, we do have a genuine concern.”
Mayor Bonnie Crombie said she was “deeply shocked and saddened to hear of this senseless act of gun violence in our city.”
Peel police are working with their counterparts in Toronto and elsewhere as they determine who was behind this attack. “As a member of the Police board, I am committed to ensuring Mississauga remains one of the safest cities by working to get illegal guns off our streets,” said Crombie. “I want to extend my sincere thanks to our first responders who quickly respond to the scene.”
And the mayor and Chief McCord offered their condolences as well to the family of the dead teen. “It’s simply unacceptable,” said Crombie. She’s right.
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