TORONTO, May 26 (Reuters) – Toronto police shot and killed a man walking down a street with a gun in a city neighborhood on Thursday afternoon, an incident that caused five nearby schools to be closed as a precaution, city officials said.
Officers responding to a report of a gunman in the area shot after the gunman confronted them, Toronto Police Chief James Ramer told a media conference. He declined to give further details, citing an ongoing investigation.
Earlier on Twitter, Toronto police said officers had shot and that the suspect, described as a man in his late teens or early twenties, was injured.
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The scene where the man was shot by Toronto police is about 130 meters (426 feet) from William G Davis Junior Public School, which was the last of five schools to leave. a lock.
All school blockades were lifted after a couple of hours, according to the Toronto District School Board.
The incident came days after a gunman in Texas killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school. The Texas shooting has fueled concern over gun violence around the world.
Toronto police have blocked about 300 meters of roadway near the scene while special investigation officers are conducting their investigation, according to a Reuters witness.
“I certainly understand the trauma and trauma it must have been for staff, students and parents, given the recent events that have taken place in the United States,” Ramer said.
Ramer said Toronto police do not yet have all the details of the incident and “I do not want to speculate and suggest that it is something similar to what is happening in the United States.”
The Texas school shooting on Tuesday was one of more than 200 mass shootings reported in the United States in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.
The rate of homicides with firearms in Canada is 0.5 per 100,000 people, well below the US rate of 4.12, according to a 2021 analysis by the Institute of Metrics and Health Assessment of the University of Washington (IHME). Read more
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Report by Chris Helgren in Toronto and Rami Ayyub and Eric Beech in Washington; Written by Ismail Shakil; Editing by Leslie Adler, Sandra Maler and David Gregorio
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