Police call fatal Etobicoke shooting ‘a tragedy’ as they ID victim, look for 2 suspects​on March 27, 2025 at 6:22 pm

Toronto Police say they are looking for two male suspects in Wednesday night’s North Etobicoke fatal shooting of a man now identified as 23-year-old Awais Ismail Awais of Toronto.

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Cops say they responded to a shooting at about 9 p.m. in the Martin Grove-Albion Rds. area and found a man with injuries in the most southern end of a townhouse building complex.

Police say he was treated by paramedics at the scene before being pronounced dead.

“We are looking for two suspects, and (the first subject is described) as male, wearing a black hooded jacket, black pants and black shoes,” Homicide Det.-Sgt Jason Davis said at a press conference Thursday.

“Suspect number two is described as a male wearing a grey hoodie, white T-shirt, black pants, white socks and dark shoes. We have started an intensive video canvas in that area. We are tracking their movements as we speak. We believe that they may have been dropped off in a vehicle.”

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Davis said there are townhomes and a playground near the scene of the shooting and it was lucky that more people weren’t hurt.

“It’s awful to stand up here for one victim but (Wednesday) night we’re lucky that I’m not up here talking about multiple victims,” he said. “And that is an area that there are small children, kids, playgrounds plagued with gun violence (Wednesday) night.”

He said Awais was with “a small group of people” before he was shot.

“We are encouraging those people to come forward, we would like to speak with them,” he said. “At this point in time, we’re trying to figure out the exact circumstances of why this took place. This is a tragedy.”

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Davis couldn’t confirm that Awais was the victim of a targeted shooting or how many guns may have been involved given the number of shots observed fired by media at the scene.

“There were different shots fired, as far as the number of firearms, I’m not going to get into at this point,” he said.

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Investigators are asking anyone with information, or video footage of the area or incident, to call police at 416-808-7400 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

This is Toronto’s seventh homicide of 2025.

Davis did confirm they checked in with Peel Regional Police regarding another fatal shooting on Wednesday night in Brampton in which a man died in a rural home and the two incidents aren’t believed to be related.

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