Police: 2 Victims Are Dead, As Is Gunman, In Toronto Shooting

Updated 2:26 p.m. ET

Two people were killed and 13 others were injured when a gunman opened fire Sunday night on a busy street in the Greektown neighborhood of Toronto.

Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters that the shooter was also dead. Authorities have not disclosed whether he killed himself or died in exchange of gunfire with police.

The province's Special Investigations Unit said the gunman was 29 years old but did not release his name.

Saunders said the two victims who died are a 10-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman. Their names have not been released. The 13 people injured range in age from 10 to 59 years old and have injuries ranging "from minor to serious in nature," the police chief said at a news conference Monday.

The shooting started at about 10 p.m. ET on Sunday, law enforcement officials said.

"It was a very, very, very quick, dynamic incident that occurred in very short order, from start to finish," said homicide Detective Sgt. Terry Browne. "We do have a number of different scenes that we are now focusing on."

Witnesses told multiple local media outlets that they suddenly heard a barrage of gunfire in the area.

Carrie Lahey told CBC that she was eating at a restaurant when the gunman burst in.

"We were sitting out on the patio, and we heard shots, so we ran inside and he came in the restaurant and shot the girl right in front of me," she told the broadcaster. "If we didn't run inside at that time, we probably would have been dead right now."

Another witness, Jessica Young, told The Star that she was working at a coffee shop in the area when she saw the gunman through the window.

"He sees me, or he sees my co-worker or someone, and points the gun and shoots through the window," Young told the newspaper. She said he was wearing dark clothes and a baseball hat.

At this point, police have not released additional information about the shooter or provided any theories about a potential motive.

"We do not know why this has happened yet. The investigation itself is very fluid, it's very new," Saunders told reporters Monday. "It's going to take some time, and because of that I'm not going to invite any type of speculation."

The scene in Greektown remained closed, he said, adding that authorities were working to open it up to traffic.

Police were asking that anyone with information about the shooting come forward. They stressed that because the shooting happened in a crowded area, the sheer number of witnesses should allow them to piece together a picture of what happened.

Shortly after the shooting, Toronto Mayor John Tory told reporters that "guns are too readily available to too many people," according to the CBC.

Police officials in Toronto announced last week that they would be assigning more officers to the city's streets during peak evening hours as part of a $15 million "gun violence reduction plan."

Authorities have been responding to an uptick in violence, including an incident in May when two people set off a bomb inside an Indian restaurant in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

That bombing came just over a month after a driver plowed a van into a crowd of pedestrians on a busy Toronto street, killing 10 and injuring 15.

Saunders said that there is a "newness" to these violent acts in Toronto. "Other large cities around the world go through this tremendously more than we have. I think we have to figure out what we can do collectively. It's going to take time."

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