Peel police have fatally shot a “high-risk” offender, a 30-year-old man who allegedly had a gun, outside Terminal One of the Toronto Pearson Airport Thursday morning.
Flights do not appear to be affected, but the departures road to Terminal One is blocked off. Travelers must enter and exit through the arrivals doors only.
The Toronto Police Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is investigating the officer-involved shooting.
The SIU said police responded to “a man in distress” who was in an SUV at the departures terminal just before 7 a.m. local time. The man was “preparing to travel.”
“Officers located the man, and early information received indicates he produced a firearm,” said the SIU in a press release.
Three officers then “discharged their firearms at the man.” It is unclear whether the suspect fired his weapon.
He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Police say no officers were injured, and there is no “known threat” to public safety. A total of nine investigators, three of them forensic, have been assigned to the case.
Witnesses reported hearing “many shots,” according to the Toronto Star. Other witnesses said they saw a man bleeding, and an officer performing CPR, reported the CBC.
Peel Regional Police posted on X, confirming there are no known threats to public safety, and calling it “an isolated incident.”
“Expect delays at the terminal,” wrote the Peel police. Footage on social media shows the highway leading up to the airport with cars at a standstill. Many people are seen standing on the road among the stopped vehicles.
According to the Toronto Sun, the shooting occurred due to a parking disagreement outside the Terminal One departures entrance. He reportedly got out and back into his SUV more than once. The man’s sister was also in the vehicle.
“Unfortunately, today we did have a tragic incident,” Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah told reporters at the airport.
“What our officers engaged in was a discussion with a group of individuals that were experiencing a dispute. Our officers spent an amount of time trying to resolve the dispute, an immense amount of de-escalation and engagement with the parties.”
“As a result of that, to protect the community and the passengers here at the airport, two of the officers engaged with the individual.”
“As a result, the subject was shot.”
“I can advise you that a man in his 30s has been pronounced dead. He has been transported to a hospital. I’m absolutely grateful that our officers are uninjured.”
Witnesses said they watched a female police officer and “a young Caucasian man” interacting before the shooting took place, while two other officers stood by.
“It began as a curbside disagreement over parking at the curbside,” a Peel police source told the Sun.
“The guy had been there in his car, and he had his sister with him,” he said, adding Pearson Airport security had been trying to move him along.
The whole interaction spanned about 10 minutes.
“They were all trying to de-escalate it, calm him down, and help him, but it escalated,” said the source.
Another source told the outlet’s Joe Warmington the man had initially “argued with airport security, who called Peel police to respond.”
“The first officer who responded is an experienced officer, and she tried to talk to the man and asked him to move his car,” said the source, but the man resisted.
He got out of his car “and said he was going to his trunk to get something [and] returned with a gun and charged at the officer. She just reacted, pulled her gun, and fired.”
The other officers backed up the female cop. Police initially suspected the man had retrieved the gun from his trunk but now believe he had the firearm on him the whole time.
Investigators will comb through footage from the cops’ body cams, as well as airport security cameras and video submitted by witnesses.
“There will be a lot of video of this,” said the police source.
“There will be no problem understanding what happened here once all of that has been reviewed.”
“It’s not clear if this was orchestrated, but it's looking more like a reactionary incident. That said, it will all be investigated. He did have a gun, was at the airport for a period of time, so it will all be probed.”
The man has a history with the law. He has a firearms ban and has been charged with a stabbing.
“He seemed to be in crisis and was planning to travel,” a source told the Sun.
Danilo Simic told the state broadcaster he had just dropped off a friend at the airport and was planning his route home when he heard at least 10 “loud bangs.”
"Right away I thought, this can't be a car's loud exhaust. This is something different, something that I haven't heard before," he said.
Simic, sitting in his car, instinctively ducked, assuming they were gunshots, as everyone around him "came to a standstill.”
He said as he drove away, he could see the man lying on the ground, bleeding from his torso and head. There he saw a cop giving him CPR, and more police restraining a woman from approaching the man on the ground.
Another witness, Jake Seymour, was outside when the shooting happened. He heard multiple shots and then went to find first aid assistance. By then, more officers arrived on scene, and the main exits were blocked off, he told the CBC.
The airport’s roadway that leads to the parking garage reportedly also remains blocked off, as is the departures road. Police are asking people who are going to the airport to go through the arrivals road.