Just call it what it is — Toronto the Not-So-Good.
If you thought the shootings and beating — caught on videos I presented this week — were shocking, this may be worse. It’s a graphic, disturbing, eye-opening stabbing captured on video by a security camera on Aug. 28 that has now been released by Toronto Police in an effort to find two vicious attackers.
“We need your help to find these two suspects involved in a stabbing near Yonge and Dundas,” 51 Division Supt. Peter Moreira said in a tweet.
In the video you see two men tackle a man, appear to stab him five times while kicking him. On the ground the wounded man tries to get up and before he leaves, the stabber comes back and kicks the victim’s cellphone under a dumpster.
It’s pathetic. It’s infuriating. It’s Toronto.
“We need the suspects identified,” Moreira told me. “There are three women who were with the main suspect who we need to come forward.”
This is the perfect example of why Toronto needs a lucrative, call-in information line with large cash rewards as well as proper witness protection possibilities. The police need more resources to encourage people to come forward.
That said, you can call detectives at 51 Division, 416-808-5104, or Crime Stoppers anonymously reveal who these guys are.
Police have also releases images of the suspects.
But it’s the blood-curdling video that highlights the lack of basic human empathy that is so prevalent on Toronto streets this summer. If not for a veteran cop taking to Twitter, we may never even have heard of it.
“The victim was stabbed repeatedly,” said Moreira. “The gratuitous violence is concerning.”
While this victim is recovering from serious injuries, police are worried about potential future victims.
“We have seen these random and brazen attacks happening with more frequency,” said Moreira.
As Sue-Ann Levy reported in the Saturday Sun, the Bond Hotel — just steps away from where this violence unfolded — opened its doors to homeless and addicted displaced from the Mount Pleasant and Eglinton area on Aug. 21. With Yonge-Dundas Square already filled with vagrants and clients of an adjacent safe injection site and needle exchange, the city centre’s main tourism location has more people with issues in the area.
With that comes crime, drug abuse, violence and mental health breakdowns — not to mention stabbings, beatings and shootings. We care when innocent victims are wounded but Moreira is just as concerned that many of the victims are the vulnerable themselves. He points out many feel they have nowhere to turn when victimized.
“What concerns me is the unreported incidents like this because these addicts think they will be arrested for outstanding warrants, breaches of releases etc.” he said. “I don’t know how many unreported incidents happen but I know it happens since many calls result in our officers arriving after suspects and victims have already left.”
In this video, this man only received medical assistance when someone phoned 911 for an ambulance. His attackers are still on the loose — for now.
Is there still enough good left in Toronto for someone to come forward and help police put these assailants before the courts for attempted murder?
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