For the second time this year, the United States Consulate in Toronto was struck by gunfire in what Olivia Chow, the city’s mayor, called “a brazen attack.”
The shooting occurred in the heart of the city’s downtown at 4:46 a.m. on Monday and was overheard by a police officer stationed outside the building in a cruiser, Deputy Chief Frank Barredo of the Toronto Police Service told reporters.
Officers have been guarding the building since March, after two men jumped out of a Honda sport utility vehicle and fired a volley of shots causing minor damage. That episode became part of a broader investigation into shootings around the city; a Toronto police officer was fatally shot while trying to execute a search warrant related to the operation.
The single shot fired on Monday appeared to come from a white Honda sedan that did not have license plates and drove by the officer who was guarding the building “at very high rates of speed,” Chief Barredo said.
Other police officers chased the car as it made its way onto an expressway, on a pursuit that reached speeds of nearly 90 miles per hour before it was eventually called off for safety reasons, Chief Barredo said. A police helicopter that could have helped track down the fleeing car was not available at the time, he added.
Chief Barredo said it was too early to draw any links between the shooting on Monday and the episode at the consulate in March. Three people have been arrested in connection with the earlier attack, but the police have offered no details about a motive for that attack.
“To the person or persons responsible, we will get you,” Ms. Chow said. “We have apprehended the previous shooters, all three of them, and we will bring you to justice.”
The police said the attack on Monday had caused “some damage” to the facade of the building. It did not describe the type of the gun believed to have been used in the shooting.
Like the previous shooting, the episode is being investigated by a special national security unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as by the terrorism unit of the Toronto police force.
