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More Eaton Centre Shooting Details Surface
What we've learned since Saturday.
Police provide details of today's arrest in the Eaton Centre shooting.
Saturday’s shooting at the Eaton Centre created a hectic scene, with plenty of misinformation to go around. Collating information made available yesterday and from a police briefing this afternoon, here’s a summary of what we know:
The name of the deceased is Ahmed Hassan.
Hassan, a 24-year-old man, was gang-involved, according to police. He appears to have been a target of the shooting, but police think another man who was injured, a 23-year-old, may also have been shot intentionally.
The actual number of injured was six, not seven.
Initial reports said that the number of people hurt during the shooting was seven, but that’s not the whole story. We know now that only six people, aside from Hassan, were hurt by bullets.
It’s true that officials told reporters that seven people were hurt, but one of those was a pregnant woman who police now say was not injured by a bullet. The story being reported is that she was trampled by a fleeing crowd, at which point she went into labour. It’s accurate to say that she was injured as a result of the shooting, but not that she was a victim of the shooting.
Police have laid charges, but their investigation continues.
Police charged Christopher Husbands, age 23, earlier today, after Husbands turned himself in to 52 Division. He faces one count of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder. Husbands was on house arrest at the time of Saturday’s shooting; police say he knew Hassan and that the two were in a gang together, but that they believe that the shooting was a personal matter and not gang-related.
The Sun thinks the shooting may have been related to another shooting, earlier in the day.
Think what you will about the Sun, but they do have lots of cop sources. Some of those informants are telling the paper’s reporters that the Eaton Centre shooting may have been a continuation of an argument that had resulted in a shooting earlier in the day, at Alexandra Park. These sources also say that the person who turned himself in (so, Husbands) may have done so in relation to that earlier shooting, and not the one at Eaton Centre. The Sun also says it has reason to believe that the suspect had recently been released from prison after a five-year stay, and that the violence he is suspected of having committed was somehow retaliatory.