Nearly six months after the Danforth shooting, newly unsealed search warrants show that police discovered a cache of automatic weapons ammunition — including fully loaded AK-47 magazines — in shooter Faisal Hussain’s bedroom.
The new details of the Danforth shooting investigation released Tuesday were previously redacted by the Crown and shed new light on the shooting that killed 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis and injured 13 others.
The unsealed portions of the information to obtain orders (ITO) for Hussain’s home reveal that police found two fully loaded AK-47 magazines, two loaded 9 mm magazines, two loaded drum magazines, three fully loaded extended magazines, and additional types of shotgun ammunition.
Police believed the discovery of the ammunition indicated the presence of other types of firearms. To date, investigators have only said that a handgun was found at the scene.
“It is reasonable to believe that when fully loaded magazines are located, there would be a firearm or firearms parts in the residence,” investigators said according to the search warrants. “Locating that firearm and ammunition would provide further evidence of planning and preparation of the offence.”
An empty gun box was also found in the bedroom, along with a long gun case, a number of cellphones and white powder that police suspected was cocaine.
Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, said the AK-47 and its variants are part of a prohibited class of firearm in Canada and the ammunition may have come from the U.S.
“This suggests, at least from a bird’s eye view, that this individual may have gotten this ammunition from somebody who was smuggling ammunition and firearms from the United States,” said Lee. He also called for more long-term studies on where guns used in Canadian crimes originate from.
“Canada has this very unique challenge of enforcing firearm and ammunition regulations domestically because of its position next to several States where an AK-47 magazine and [the ammunition] is very easy to come by,” he said.
According to police, Hussain, 29, opened fire with a handgun in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood, a bustling area of bars and restaurants, on July 22. He shot himself in the head after exchanging gunfire with police.
Global News has previously reported that the handgun found at the scene was a .40-calibre Smith & Wesson stolen in Saskatchewan in 2016.
Conspiracy DVDs found
As police continued to search for a motive, the newly released details of the investigation show that police seized videos about Iraq and 9/11 conspiracy theories in Hussain’s bedroom.
The DVDs included films by American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones such as The Road to Tyranny, which promotes the claim of government involvement in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A popular right-wing conspiracist, Jones and his Infowars show were banned from Apple, Facebook and YouTube last year.
Other DVDs found in the apartment were titled Loose Change and 9/11 in Plain Site. Both also offer up discredited conspiracies about al-Qaida’s attacks on the United States.
The series of DVDs also included Terror Storm, Painful Deception, American Dictators, Iraq for Sale and Weapons of Mass Deception. A DVD with the handwritten title what is Islama was also found.
The types of documentaries police found are popular in the right-wing anti-authority movement, said Prof. Barbara Perry, a hate crimes expert at the University of Ontario Institution of Technology.
“That’s one of the common places where you’ll find these sorts of conspiracy theories,” she said.
Conspiracies about the 9/11 attacks, which were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, also persist in the Arab world and countries such as Iran.
The search turned up two receipts for $9,300 for cash payments to the Abad Co-operative Housing Society in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The receipts were labelled “mosque fund, membership fee, transfer, pillars and forms fees.”
The court documents add to the portrait of Hussain who police described as a troubled loner captivated by violence and explosions. They show that while Hussain had no criminal record, he had several run-ins with the law that included an arrest for shoplifting two days before the shooting. He was let go unconditionally.
Police were also called to Hussain’s apartment three times in 2010 to deal with an “emotionally disturbed person,” according to the documents.
The Toronto police and the province’s Special Investigations Unit are conducting separate investigations into the Danforth tragedy.
Neither has offered a timeline on when their work might be completed.
Toronto police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new information and Monica Hudon, a spokeswoman for SIU, said their investigation was “ongoing.”
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