TORONTO \u2014 A shooting near a Toronto street festival killed two men and wounded four other people Saturday evening, police said, adding that what initially prompted an active-shooter warning was an exchange of gunfire between two people targeting each other.<\/p>\n
Toronto Police Deputy Chief Frank Barredo said investigators recovered two firearms after the shooting that was reported at 8:12 p.m. near St. Clair Avenue West and Arlington Avenue, where the Salsa on St. Clair festival was underway.<\/p>\n
No suspect or suspects had been arrested by the time of a late-night news conference, where Barredo confirmed both of the deceased victims were men.<\/p>\n
Officers initially urged the public to avoid the area before later announcing the scene had been secured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some concern about an active shooter. That turned out not to be the case,\u201d Barredo said. But the two gunmen involved in the shooting \u201cindiscriminately put vast numbers of people in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valerie Rodriguez said she was sitting outside a nearby restaurant when people suddenly began screaming and running.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bunch of people \u2026 told us to lay down onto the floor,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got scared because we didn\u2019t know exactly what was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Festival vendor Patsy Gutierrez said she was serving customers when she saw \u201ca huge wave\u201d of people fleeing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody started getting frantic and then we stopped serving,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it should be something that\u2019s happening at these types of events.\u201d<\/p>\n
A large police presence remained around the festival, an annual celebration of Latin American culture that draws thousands of people to Toronto\u2019s St. Clair West neighborhood for live music, dancing, food and cultural performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m deeply disturbed and angry about this reckless and irresponsible act of violence right in the middle of a festival attended by families,\u201d Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said.<\/p>\n
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a social media post that his thoughts were with the victims, families and others affected by the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am devastated by the senseless violence at the Salsa on St. Clair Festival that has claimed two lives and injured others,\u201d Ford said.<\/p>\n
Toronto, Canada\u2019s largest city, is among North America\u2019s safest major cities. Fatal shootings, particularly those involving multiple victims in public places, are relatively rare.<\/p>\n
\u201cToronto is one of the safest cities in the world but we are 3 million people and unfortunately we are not immune,\u201d Barredo said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 A shooting near a Toronto street festival killed two men and wounded four other people Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[36381,17,42329,94,61,42330,6876,48],"class_list":["post-126604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-active-shooter","tag-canada","tag-cppixtoronto","tag-ontario","tag-ottawa","tag-salsa-on-st-clair","tag-shooter","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}