The shootings at Toronto-area synagogues and a Jewish school, like the one at the U.S. Consulate in March and more than 25 others, have been committed by a network of mostly young people who are being hired online to perform and record the violent acts, Toronto police said at a news conference June 16.
Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw announced further charges and details related to the consulate shooting investigation. There was an exchange of gunfire, while police were executing search warrants related to the shooting, that killed Constable Marc Pinizzotto, 43, of the Emergency Task Force on June 11. A 19-year-old who allegedly shot the police officer suffered life-threatening injuries and is in hospital, according to a police news release. Nicholas Bennett has been charged with first-degree murder and also faces charges related to a shooting in Scarborough that targeted a high rise unit, and a shooting in Etobicoke.
Two guns were recovered in the investigation: a 9mm used in six gunfire discharge incidents, and a .45 caliber used in 21 incidents, Demkiw said. While these incidents did not include the shootings at three Toronto-area synagogues in March, or three previous overnight attacks in 2024 at a Jewish girls’ school in North York, Demkiw said the incidents against Jewish institutions were carried out in a similar fashion, calling it a “broader pattern” evident in the U.S. Consulate and other shootings. No one was injured in any of the shootings.
“What we are dealing with in this case, and in other unrelated incidences, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, is a recurring and similar modus operandi,” Demkiw told reporters.
“And that is criminals for hire. Through encrypted messaging apps, young people are hired to carry out attacks against various targets. And in order to get paid, they’re required to film their attacks.”
Demkiw said police cannot yet determine who is paying for these criminal acts, nor did he confirm the reported involvement of foreign actors, though the force is working with RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSET) and FBI contacts, as well as police forces in nearby jurisdictions such as Halton and Peel Region, as well as with the TPS Counter Terrorism Security Unit and the Integrated Gun and Gang Unit, along with forensic teams and the homicide squad.
“We are still working actively to investigate who is responsible for orchestrating these criminal acts,” he said. “But we know… that bad actors are using criminal elements in our city to carry out these dangerous incidents, and it is clear that some of the people hiring these criminals wanting to create a sense of fear in our communities, including in the Jewish community.”
Police believe the young people carrying out the offences are doing it for pay, and that digital messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal are being used to recruit those doing the act.
Demkiw said police continue to work to identify and hold accountable those responsible for the criminal acts.
“This investigation remains ongoing while we’ve been able to connect these firearms to numerous incidents,” he said.
“We are still working to identify not only the individuals responsible for pulling the triggers, but also those who may have directed or organized these acts of violence.”
Demkiw said TPS was in support of federal legislative efforts such as Bill C-16, which would create a new offence for recruitment of minors to commit crimes, and Bill C-22, which would allow police to access encrypted conversations on messaging apps, with court authorization.
“It is all of us in our communities that suffer, and the risks and consequences are very real,” he said.
Demkiw was joined by the force’s Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews, who gave details of the March 10 incident. outside the downtown Toronto consular building at 4:30 a.m., which was deemed a national security incident.
Police said they believe that multiple suspects, using the same two seized guns, carried out the total 27 incidents in the Greater Toronto Area, a number which police say does not include the attacks on the synagogues or the Jewish school in 2024. A 19-year-old male was arrested for one of those incidents late in 2024.
“We believe that the firearms are being swapped around,” Matthews said. “The m.o., or the scheme as we call it, where we do believe that the people that have conduct or committed the shootings at the Jewish schools and the synagogues are involved in a similar scheme—we take the evidence from the scene, of the members [of networks or cells] videotaping the acts, which is common to ensure that they’re getting paid for what they’ve been sent out to do, that there definitely is an overlap.”
He also cited a shooting in Oakville, Ont. targeting waste management company GFL Environmental, and another involving a tow-truck company, among the gunfire discharge incidents linked to the two seized guns.
Police are investigating what links exist, and any networks in the investigation, said Matthews.
“It seems there are multiple networks, multi-layered, that the actual actors that are committing the violence are younger in age,” said Matthews. “They’re all adults that have committed these offences, but it’s not lost in us that the younger people are being recruited.”
Sharing the firearms appears to be common among the network’s members, he said.
“We have 21 different shooting incidents with the .45 caliber, six with the nine millimeter, and we don’t believe that is the same person pulling the triggers in each one,” he said.
Matthews mentioned that Project Resolute, the force’s ongoing response to local events following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel, and Task Force Guardian, the Counter Terrorism Security Unit created in March, were involved in the investigation.
“We have deployed multiple resources throughout the city in both uniform and plain clothes to keep the city safe,” he added.
Matthews said determining the motivations behind the attacks that young people are being recruited and hired to carry out is part of the ongoing investigation.
“As far as the shooters themselves, they are being paid for these acts. As far as the organizers and orchestrators in the background, there are multiple dimensions to that. That is very much a subject of ongoing investigation.” In response to a question from a reporter, Matthews said that police believe there’s often a “middle person” involved in the scheme who are the ones “paying the actual shooters.”
In May, U.S. authorities arrested a 32-year-old Iraqi man Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, who prosecutors allege was linked to planned attacks in the U.S. and others carried out in Europe in March and April, including a stabbing attack against two Jewish men in April in Britain; was connected to Iranian regime-backed terror cells; and had directed people in different countries to carry out attacks against U.S. and Israeli or Jewish interests or people.
The Iraqi national currently being held in the U.S. had reportedly been recorded taking responsibility for the U.S. Consulate shooting and an attack on a Canadian synagogue (court documents reference an attack on a “Knesset;” a synagogue in Hebrew is called “Beit Knesset” or house of assembly). The man had told a criminal collaborator that “in Canada, we have our guys” in communications that had been monitored by the FBI.
Appearing with Demkiw and Matthews, RCMP Chief Superintendent Jamie Zettler, a commanding officer for the Ontario region, said that he was aware of media reports indicating the Iraqi national in U.S. custody had taken responsibility for the consulate attack and one on a synagogue.
Toronto Police Service Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews of Detective Operation provides an update on arrests made, on Tuesday, June 16, 2026 (Screenshot: Toronto Police Service/YouTube)
“Certainly, we engage with our international partners as we do with our provincial and municipal partners to gather information. We take a look at the information we evaluate it, and we collaborate and corroborate it, and we use that evidence to try and move forward with investigation,” he said. “The investigation is still ongoing. I do not want to comment as to whether or not the validity or not validity of that information, but it is part of our investigation.”
Nobody was hurt in the consulate or the . Police previously announced the arrest of two males in connection with the March 6 and 7 shootings overnight at two synagogues; they were both 17 years old at the time of the alleged offences, and cannot be named.
An 18-year-old has been arrested and faces a number of firearms charges in relation to the shooting at the U.S. Consulate. Another 18-year-old faces firearms charges related to a shooting at a home in Oakville and a business in the west end of Toronto.
A 19-year-old suspect wanted in connection with the shooting at the consulate remains at large.
In reaction to the news that synagogue shootings are being coordinated by a network hiring paid gunmen, Jewish community organizations said the police update should sharpen the focus on who is allegedly organizing, financing and directing attacks behind the scenes.
Rochelle Direnfeld, senior criminal counsel with the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism (ALCCA), said Toronto police’s comments confirmed what ALCCA had previously identified as a major concern: that organized criminal cells are recruiting young people to target Jewish institutions.
Direnfeld pointed to the recent arrest in the United States of Al-Saadi, an Iraqi national and senior member of Kata’ib Hizballah, which has been designated a terrorist entity by the U.S. She said Al-Saadi had claimed responsibility for the shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto, as well as the shooting of a Jewish site in the city.
She said similar concerns have been raised about Russian and Iran-linked actors recruiting young people to attack Jewish institutions and infrastructure.
“Today’s confirmation heightens the importance of focusing on state terror proxies operating or directing criminal activities in Canada,” Direnfeld said.
The Community Safety Council of Canada, a registered not-for-profit security organization that works with law enforcement agencies and all levels of government on community safety initiatives, commended the Toronto Police Service, the RCMP, the Guns and Gangs Task Force, the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team and other law enforcement partners for what it called significant work in identifying and disrupting what appears to be an organized “gun-for-hire” network.
But the organization said the people who pull the trigger are not the only concern.
“The individuals carrying out these shootings are obviously a serious concern, but the greater threat lies with those recruiting, financing, directing, and arming them from the shadows,” the organization said in an email statement.
The CSCC said if young people are being paid to commit acts of violence on behalf of hidden organizers, the shootings may point to a broader pattern of recruitment and radicalization.
“The priority must be identifying who is exploiting vulnerable youth, where the money is coming from, how illegal firearms are being sourced and circulated, and whether this reflects a broader criminal, ideological, or foreign-influenced recruitment network operating within Canada,” the statement said.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said in a statement posted to X that the police update “should concern every Canadian.”
CIJA said police had described a pattern in which criminals-for-hire were recruited to carry out attacks, including shootings at synagogues and Jewish schools, with the goal of spreading fear and intimidation.
“This comes at a time when extremists at home and foreign actors abroad have weaponized events in the Middle East to fuel hatred and violence against Canadians,” CIJA said.
The national advocacy organization said the people who carried out the shootings, and those directing attacks on Canadian soil, must be held accountable.
“This is a matter of safeguarding Canada’s national security and our Canadian way of life,” CIJA said.
With files from Mitchell Consky.
Update June 18, 2026: The 19-year-old suspect wanted in connection with the consulate shooting has been arrested, Toronto Police said in a press release.