Around 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning in March, a gunman got out of a car on a quiet street near the waterfront in Oakville. Almost immediately, he opened fire.
An accomplice stood beside him, apparently filming the attack on a phone as the gunman shot at a stone house with a double-car garage, according to neighbours who later watched the incident unfold on their security footage.
Suddenly there was a flash from across the street. Someone was firing at the pair. They scattered.
Neighbours say one suspect got back in the vehicle and sped away. His partner, who was shot in the melee, crawled on the ground, leaving bloodstains on the pavement. Police soon swarmed the area and arrested the injured suspect.
At first, the neighbourhood struggled to make sense of what happened. The incident bore all the hallmarks of an ongoing series of attacks targeting the homes of executives linked to GFL Environmental, the massive waste management firm that controls most of Toronto’s recycling and garbage collection.
But there was one crucial difference in Oakville: the owners of the stone house had no apparent ties to GFL.
What is now clear, months later, is that the job was bungled. A former GFL employee, who is thought to be the intended target, lives across the street. Police told a handful of neighbours they believed the mistake could be chalked up to a mix-up with Google Maps.
The Oakville incident appears to be part of a broader series of blunders and botched shootings, which ultimately helped investigators uncover an alleged gun-for-hire network that paid teenagers under $1,000 per job, sources tell the Star. (The Star agreed not to name the sources, all of whom have knowledge of the investigation, as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.)
The network is now believed to be responsible for some of the highest-profile shootings in Toronto’s recent history, including a March attack on the U.S. consulate. Last week, police conducted a raid as part of that investigation, during which Toronto officer Marc Pinizzotto was shot and killed.
10 days in March
At the beginning of this year, it seemed the attacks on GFL had finally stopped.
It had been over a year since the flurry of attacks on properties linked to GFL in 2024, including the late-night shooting that damaged the Rosedale mansion of GFL founder and CEO Patrick Dovigi.
It wasn’t clear who was behind the attacks, or what was driving them. In an interview with the National Post at the time, Dovigi dismissed questions about organized crime in the garbage business as a TV-fueled fantasy.
“I’ve been in business for 20 years. Who’s going to scare me? This is not ‘The Sopranos,’” he said shortly after the attack in September 2024.
Months later, the attacks on GFL property had petered out and the investigation appeared to have stalled. Police hadn’t announced any arrests nor provided any details about the suspects. It seemed that the mystery would go unsolved.
Then, in March of this year, the attacks started again. Twice in one week, shots were fired into the GFL facility on Weston Road. About two weeks later, the company’s Aurora operations branch was also targeted.
From there, the targets shifted to executives linked to Green Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a construction company part-owned by GFL. On March 22, a shooter fired at the Cedarvale home of GIP’s Sean Goldberg, smashing through the front and back windows of the house, though no one was injured. Three days later, there was another shooting, this time at a Woodbridge home belonging to GIP executive Paul Borrelli.
A security guard at Borrelli’s house chased two shooters, racing down the driveway in a vehicle and smashed into the suspects’ getaway car.
The suspects abandoned the car, leaving behind a trove of evidence for investigators, according to a well-placed source.
“That was the first crack in this case,” the source said.
One suspect was arrested near the scene, while another was charged weeks later. Akhari Bowen, 18, and Chris Perreira, 23, are accused in the shooting. Bowen is also facing charges in connection with the shootings at Goldberg’s residence and the GFL Aurora facility.
A ‘random, crazy action’
A few days later, police got their next break in the case.
On March 26, two suspects fired into a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym in Etobicoke, shattering the high storefront windows. Two suspects jumped into a car and sped down Lake Shore Boulevard West. Police chased the car and at some point, the suspects crashed, fleeing on foot, the source told the Star.
Reached by the Star, the gym’s owner called the ordeal a “random crazy action.”
“I don’t have any conflict with anybody,” he said in April. “We’re friends of the community.”
Investigators later said the shooter had intended to hit a neighbouring business, striking the gym by mistake.
That same day, investigators found the abandoned car and discovered a cellphone, with an address entered into a GPS.
It seemed like the shooters’ next destination was a residential street near the water in Oakville, the source said, so police warned the homeowner at the address.
In the days that followed, residents in the Oakville neighbourhood noticed police cruisers patrolling the area, along with a private security guard parked in the driveway of one of the homes on the street.
Then, on March 29, shooters opened fire at the stone house with the double car garage — not the one with security in the driveway.
Property targeted by mistake
Police told the owners of the stone house that their property was hit by mistake and the assailants had been looking for the home of Pasquale (Pat) Luongo, a veteran of the waste management industry who lived directly across the street and at one point, had ties to GFL.
It’s not clear exactly why Luongo became a target. In the 2010s, he sold a local waste disposal company to GFL and stayed on with the company briefly. But a lawyer for Luongo said her client is not an executive, shareholder or director of GFL.
In security footage of the incident, reviewed by the Star, a vehicle with its headlights on can be seen parked in the driveway of Luongo’s home. Neighbours said that vehicle belonged to a security guard.
After the assailants open fire at the property across the street, a number of flashes can be seen emanating from the security vehicle. The two assailants begin to run, but one falls to the ground. He squirms on the ground for a few moments, seemingly unable to stand up.
The security vehicle can be seen driving down the street, before the video cuts out.
The same morning, officers found 18-year-old Jayon Burgher, suffering from a gunshot wound and arrested him.
Burgher was charged in connection with the shooting, limping into a Burlington courtroom in April, where a justice of the peace released him on bail. (Burgher, still recovering from his injury, couldn’t stand to receive the decision.)
On April 15 Jayon Burgher, 18, of Barrie, was arrested by Halton police in relation to a firearm discharge targeting a residence in Oakville on March 29. While in custody, he was charged by Toronto police in relation to a firearm discharge event on March 26 targeting a business in the Islington Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard West area.
Toronto Police Service
Once in custody, investigators identified Burgher as a suspect in the Etobicoke gym shooting. Operating on the belief that the phone that was recovered after the gym shooting belonged to Burgher, they applied — and were granted — a search warrant to go through it, a police source told the Star.
On June 11, Toronto’s Emergency Task Force executed a “high-risk takedown” at a fourth-floor unit in a North York apartment complex as part of an investigation into the suspected network. Inside was Nicholas Bennett, a 19-year-old who investigators believed was working with Burgher in the Etobicoke shooting. During the raid, Bennett is accused of firing a single shot that killed Pinizzotto, the 43-year-old police officer and father of two.
Bennett is accused of first-degree murder in the killing and is also facing charges in connection to the Etobicoke shooting.
And investigators believe Bennett could have been working with Burgher in the Oakville shooting too, according to the source. But Bennett has not been charged in connection with the Oakville shooting and Halton police say the second suspect is outstanding. Police in Toronto would not confirm if Bennett had been identified as a suspect.
At a press conference on Tuesday, investigators in Toronto said Bennett was working with a “multi-layered” gun-for-hire network that used teenagers to carry out shootings on behalf of various clients. But police have not said who is suspected of paying for the shootings.
Investigators believe clients of the gun-for-hire network went through a middle man, who then assigned teenagers to various shooting jobs and paid them, usually under $1,000 per job. Shooters needed to provide video evidence that the work was done in order to be paid, police have said.
Authorities say they’ve linked this “modus operandi” to at least 27 shootings across the GTA.
Bennett, who was shot during the raid, laid unconscious in hospital for days.
He made his first court appearance while conscious, yet still intubated on Friday, where he was made aware of a first-degree murder charge laid in relation to Pinizzotto’s death.
With files from Jennifer Pagliaro