Toronto police have shot and killed a man walking down a street carrying a gun in a city neighbourhood, an incident that prompted five nearby schools to be placed under precautionary lockdowns.
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Officers responding to a report of an armed man in the area fired after the gunman confronted them, Toronto Police Chief James Ramer said at a media briefing.
Earlier on Twitter, Toronto police said officers had fired and the suspect, described as a male in his late teens or early 20s, was injured.
The scene where the man was shot by Toronto police is about 130 metres from the William G Davis Junior Public School, which was the last of the five schools to emerge from a lockdown.
All the school lockdowns were lifted after a couple hours, according to the Toronto District School Board.
The incident occurred days after a gunman in Texas killed 19 children and two teachers at an primary school, feeding concern worldwide about gun violence.
"I certainly understand the trauma and how traumatic this must have been for staff, students and parents, given the recent events that have happened in the United States," Ramer said.
Police do not yet have all the details of the incident, leading Ramer to add, "I don't want to speculate and suggest that it's something similar to what's happening in the United States."
The incident in Texas on Tuesday was among more than 200 mass shootings reported in the United States in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.
Canada's rate of firearm homicides is 0.5 per 100,000 people, far lower than the US rate of 4.12 per 100,000, according to a 2021 analysis by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Australian Associated Press
