mccowan shooting

Toronto car rally ends in shooting and the gunfire was all caught on video

Toronto residents are no strangers to unsanctioned car rallies and all of their giant crowds, dangerous stunt driving and highly disruptive antics, but one that just took place over the weekend took things to new levels of terrifying.

Such events became especially bad across the region during COVID, with a huge spike in loud street racing and reckless driving, which included brash incidents of giant gatherings in contravention of lockdown rules, people shooting fireworks out of moving vehicles and literally lighting roads on fire.

But footage from a rally in Scarborough on Sunday night shows things going completely beyond the usual tomfoolery of such meetups, with gunfire ringing out among the crowd, striking and injuring four people in attendance.

Police were called to a parking lot at McCowan Rd. and Milner Ave. around 9 p.m. for multiple reports of gunshots.

A video shot from a car driving through the lot shows 11 shots ringing out in quick succession, the filmer audibly shocked.

While the clip is short at just 17 seconds, the sound of the shots is loud and clear, and the confusion of those on the scene apparent as some duck and run about between parked cars and others meander casually, apparently unaware of what is happening.

Toronto police told reporters in a presser that the event, which saw hundreds of vehicles, was moved to the location last-minute after the original setting, a parking lot in Pickering, was closed off preemptively by authorities.

While three men and a woman remain in hospital with injuries ranging from minor to severe and life-altering, the suspects remain at large. Twenty other participants were ticketed for driving-related offenses.

Three other shootings took place across the city that same day, putting the four aforementioned individuals, as well as one additional man and two teenaged boys, in hospital.

Another man, aged 24, succumbed to his injuries after being shot in a townhouse at Lotherton Pathway and Caledonia Road that afternoon, but all other victims are expected to pull through as the cops "work to determine any linkages" between a couple of the incidents, which took place within hours of one another.

Mayor John Tory called the weekend violence, which included another shooting Friday night (in which one man was killed and another injured) and one on Saturday, "unacceptable" and "extremely disturbing."

Lead photo by

CP24


Latest Videos



Latest Videos


Join the conversation Load comments

Latest in City

Canada is seeing one of the worst standard-of-living declines in 40 years

Tributes pour in after death of Toronto City Councillor Jaye Robinson

It's going to get way easier to pay transit fare in Toronto with your phone

TTC literally just gave CEO Rick Leary an award days after chaotic subway shutdown

An aggressively spreading invasive species is completely taking over a Toronto park

50 tourist attractions in downtown Toronto you need to visit at least once

Stunning new lookout point overlooking Toronto wetland opens this summer

Stunning new Toronto transit station will link several TTC and GO lines