Five people were killed when a gunman stormed into a board meeting in a city north of Toronto in Canada on Sunday and opened fire.
The gunman was shot dead by police at the building in Vaughan, Ontario, after launching a violent rampage against members of its condo board — whom he apparently had a longstanding dispute with.
The shooter has been identified by local media as 73-year-old Francesco Villi.
“Horrendous scene,” Chief James MacSween of York regional police said. “Six deceased. One of them is the subject. The other five are victims.”
Villi posted a distraught video to his Facebook account just hours before the shooting and said people were “working to destroy” him.
Villi, who also lived in the building, reportedly went door-to-door targeting specific residents from the board whom he felt had done wrong and he had targeted his condo board in lawsuits spanning years, according to the Toronto Star.
During a noon briefing, the provincial Special Investigations Unit confirmed the shooter had used a semiautomatic handgun in his terrifying attack.
Police have not shared an official motive behind the “horrendous” crime, but will hold a press conference on Monday afternoon, local time.
In addition to the five dead, one other person was struck by gunfire and was recovering at a hospital on Sunday night, the New York Post reported.
The same condo board previously filed a restraining order against Villi over his “allegedly threatening, abusive, intimidating and harassing behaviour,” according to court documents.
Villi had made many unsubstantiated allegations against the condo board members over the years, sharing in public social media posts and videos that he believed they were intentionally trying to harm him.
Villi also claimed in his lawsuit an electrical room below his unit had not been constructed properly and “electromagnetic waves” were being emitted from it which had affected him, causing him pain since 2010. He also posted an image to Facebook where he claimed he had “chronic obstructive lung disease” and he needed to be in an environment without dust or pollution.
His most recent case against three condo board members and three others was dismissed by a judge in September as “frivolous and/or vexatious.”
Current condo board member Tony Cutrone told the Star he joined the board in part because his elderly mother had been bullied by Villi in the past.
Cutrone, who owns the unit for his mother, said he has tried and failed to contact several board members since Sunday.
“I messaged and tried to call them and they didn’t call back,” he said, still shaken by the horrific incident.
Cutrone said he’s working with police to find counselling for residents like his mother who were not targeted in the shooting but shaken up by it.
Resident John Santoro, a member of the condo board for about a year, remembered Villi’s erratic complaints spanning back at least five years.
While speaking to reporters outside the building he said Villi was “not a monster” and had always thought he needed “professional help.”
“I commented to my wife several times it’s going to end very badly,” he said.
Police said there was no further threat to the community and was hoping to get residents back into the building after a special unit’s investigation is concluded.
Mass shootings are rare in Canada and Toronto has long prided itself as being one of the safest big cities in the world.
In 2020, shortly after a gunman shot and killed 13 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia, Canada banned more than 1,500 models of “assault-style” firearms and components, and set limits on how destructive bullets could be.
The rate of death per person by firearm is far lower than in the US, which has more lax gun laws.
A 2021 analysis by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said Canada’s rate of firearm homicides is 0.5 per 100,000 people, versus the United States’ rate of 4.12.
With the New York Post
