A 37-year-old Indo-Canadian has been identified as the victim of the third homicide in Toronto this year.
In a release issued on Sunday, Toronto Police Service or TPS identified the victim of a shooting that occurred on Saturday as Chandan Kumar Raja Nandakumar, a resident of the Greater Toronto Area or GTA town of Brampton.
The TPS release stated that around 3.30 pm on Saturday, officers responded to a call of a shooting in the parking lot of the Woodbine Shopping Center. When they arrived at the location they found the male victim with gunshot wounds. He was thereafter transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and he succumbed to them there and was pronounced deceased.
There were no details provided on the motive behind the shooting or the suspects involved, though a police spokesperson told local media that the shooting appeared to be targeted rather than random.
Speaking to local media at the site on Saturday, TPS Inspector Errol Watson was quoted by the outlet Toronto Star as saying, “I can understand a shooting like this, especially at a mall, can cause concern for the safety of the public.”
The outlet also reported that a car parked close to the mall’s entrance had been riddled with ten bullet holes on the driver’s side.
Nandakumar, originally from Karnataka, was prominent in the Indo-Canadian community and posted photographs with personalities like Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown on his LinkedIn profile.
According to that profile, he was an IT professional who was employed with LTI Mindtree a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Infotech Canada, while having worked earlier with Cognizant, and had completed engineering studies in Bangalore.
According to a social media post, he was also active as a social media coordinator for the Kannada Sangha Toronto and Vice-President of the World Arya Vysya Mahasabha – Canada.