A man has been found dead and Ontario’s police watchdog is investigating after Peel police responded late Monday to a dangerous weapons call at a dormitory on the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus.
Officers received reports of an armed person inside a residential unit at the university’s McLuhan Court residence shortly after 9 p.m., according to Peel Regional Police Const. Tyler Bell-Morena.
The school issued a shelter-in-place order for students in the area around the same time and officers evacuated the residence, which is part of a complex that houses hundreds of first-year students. The lockdown has since been lifted and police say there is no threat to public safety.
“This is a very traumatic situation for the students. We’re all outside of their living quarters right now,” said Bell-Morena at a news conference on campus Tuesday morning. “It’s very intrusive. It’s quite an ordeal that they’ve had to live through.”
UTM incident was ‘very traumatic’ for students: police
While officers were on the scene a person discharged a firearm from inside the unit, said Bell-Morena. He said the person was armed with a handgun, for which they did not have a licence.
He said police made multiple attempts to communicate with them but were unsuccessful. Once officers entered the unit, he said police found the man dead.
Peel police and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Ontario’s police watchdog, said they died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The SIU identified the person as a 19-year-old man in a news release Tuesday, but did not provide more details. The SIU has invoked its mandate and will be investigating the man’s death, according to the release.
The SIU confirmed in an email that the man was not a student at the university. Bell-Morena said Tuesday that police believe the man was visiting someone who lived in the residence.
He did not give details on the man’s relationship to the student but said they may have been friends. “It’s very likely he was invited in,” said Bell-Morena.
The man was also a suspect of an intimate partner violence incident earlier in the day, where the victim was injured, Bell-Morena said.
Posting officer positions during UTM incident was ‘dangerous,’ police say
The SIU alleges the man who died had assaulted a woman in Brampton on Monday afternoon and police later located him at a student residence near Dundas Street W. and Mississauga Road.
“It looks to be at this point, we have an individual who was going to be wanted by police who found themselves cornered,” said Bell-Morena.
Investigators said the situation was contained to a single residential unit and there had been no reports of additional physical injuries.
Images from the scene showed police vehicles blocking roadways near the dormitory and officers directing traffic.
Kristy Denette with the SIU said the man was barricaded in an upstairs bedroom while police remained outside the residence. Police fired multiple shots of less-lethal, anti-riot projectiles, Denette told reporters at the news conference Tuesday.
That’s what was likely heard by those who posted online about hearing gunfire, said Bell-Morena.
“There was no exchange of gunfire with police,” he said.
Student Devin Bellemare said he heard sounds of the incident from a nearby residence unit.
Peel police responded to reports Monday of an armed person inside a residence at University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus. (Jacob Estrin/CBC)
“I wasn’t sure what those bangs were, but there were several going off,” he told CBC Toronto Tuesday morning, saying police activity continued until around 2 a.m.
Bellemare called the situation “tragic,” and said he thinks the university handled it as best as they could.
“You could tell the students were their priority,” he said. “It definitely helped me feel a lot safer.”
In a statement on Tuesday morning, the university said that the day’s classes are cancelled “out of fairness to, as well as compassion for, more than 2,000 residence and other students who were impacted by events last night.”
The school also said mental health and counselling supports are available for those impacted.
Alvin Tedjo, mayor-elect of Mississauga, said in a post on social media platform X Tuesday that he was “deeply saddened by the tragic incident at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus,” while thanking first responders for their efforts.
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