Dundas St. W. shooting claims young man's life

One of the city’s most homicide-prone area over the last few years claimed its latest victim this afternoon.

Police received numerous 9-1-1 calls for the sound of gunshots at around 2:58 p.m. Officers responding to the scene at 4020 Dundas St. W. and located a man in his late 20s suffering from obvious gunshots. He was transported to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Also, due to the high volume of 9-1-1 calls they received, Constable Wendy Drummond said police are receiving help from the community.

“We are getting a lot of cooperation from witnesses,” she said. “It’s a residential area, it’s a commercial area, it was three o’ clock in the afternoon.”

This could be a good sign for investigators, as Drummond acknowledged there have been many murders in the immediate area since 2009.

Most recently, Jermaine Smith was gunned down in the same housing complex as today’s homicide on Aug. 27, 2011, which came only five months after the driveby shooting murder of 19-year-old Shane Williams, who was walking in front of the complex at 4020 Dundas St. W., where today’s homicide took place.

As well, in May of 2009, 18-year-old Jarvis St. Remy was shot and killed as he waited for a bus. Ten days after that, 14-year-old Adrian Johnston was shot multiple times in the field behind the homes on Eileen Avenue, which is one street north of Dundas.

Then in December of that year, Antonia Zammit was killed by her son in another Toronto Community Housing building on the south side of Dundas, at the base of Scarlett Road.

Not far up the road was the scene of a homicide just last month, where Jaivoan Cromwell was gunned down on Woolner Avenue just off of Jane Street. Three days after that, a teen was injured in a driveby shooting on Bernice Cres., which is equidistant from Cromwell’s murder and today’s homicide.

Today’s shooting is Toronto’s 17th homicide of 2012.