Across a backdrop of a Liberal Party campaign pledge to “outlaw” handgun ownership, the outlaws go on with business as usual;
Crowds of Boxing Day shoppers fled for their lives ? some still wearing the clothing they were trying on ? after gunmen fought it out on Yonge St. just north of the Eaton Centre at a little before 5.20 p.m. night.
Before the gunsmoke could drift away, carnage littered the downtown shopping street on one of its busiest days of the year. Seven people were struck; one of them, a 15-year-old girl, was killed after a bullet shattered her face. The teenager had been downtown on a Boxing Day bargain-hunting trip. “A young woman in our city was down here doing very normal things on Boxing Day,” Police Chief Bill Blair said last night at the scene of the shooting. “I think everybody in the city of Toronto will be angry about what has taken place here.”
A 41-year-old off-duty police officer was among the victims, both shot in the legs. One of the gunshot victims tried to crawl away before coming to rest sprawled on the sidewalk in front of Pizza Pizza, at the corner of Yonge and Elm Sts., where passersby tried to help him as he talked on a cellphone.
That makes 78 murders in Toronto this year, and 52 by “gun violence”. Of course, it’s a lot easier to promise a ban on handguns than it is to deport Jamaican gang members.
