A man was arrested and charged in connection with two recent attacks on members of the Jewish community in Toronto with replica firearms, police said Friday.
Toronto police said that Ruslan Novruzov, 18, was charged with four counts of assault with a weapon, and two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose in the wake of the attacks.
Police said the investigation had been carried out by their counter-terror and firearms divisions.
Three people standing outside of Chasidei Bobov synagogue in North York in Toronto on Thursday night were shot at with a replica firearm.
One person was struck and sustained minor injuries from what apparently was a pellet gun fired from a passing vehicle, police said.
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Additionally, Novruzov is alleged to have fired a gel pellet gun at visibly Jewish residents in a drive-by attack last week in the northern part of the city, an area with several synagogues and Jewish schools.
The victims sustained minor injuries and investigators later released footage of the vehicle.
A senior police official said Friday that the attacks were meant to intimidate the Jewish community, and would be taken seriously even though they involved imitation firearms.
“We recognize that Jewish residents have been living with a heightened sense of fear due to repeated incidents targeting their community, and this only adds to that, which is unacceptable,” said acting Deputy Chief Joe Matthews. “While the weapons used were imitation firearms, the impacts are very real. These are criminal acts that we allege were meant to intimidate and cause fear.”
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “relieved” that a suspect had been arrested.
“Law enforcement agencies have my full support as they investigate, and as they work to bring justice for the victims and the wider Jewish community,” Carney said.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives for the Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris, at the Elysee Palace on January 6, 2026. (Yoan VALAT / POOL / AFP)
The attacks came several days after B’nai Brith Canada reported that acts of anti-Jewish hate reached a record high in 2025, with 6,800 such incidents reported nationwide.
The report showed that antisemitism has “metastasized” throughout all aspects of Canadian life, the group said.
Separately, a man was charged on Wednesday for firing shots at two Toronto-area synagogues in March, police announced.
The man, who is not named because he was 17 at the time of the incidents, was accused of firing shots at the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto late at night on March 6.
He is also accused of firing multiple shots at the entrance of the Shaarei Shomayim congregation in North York, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south, around 30 minutes later.
In both cases, only the buildings were damaged, and no injuries were reported.
Those shootings followed a third, separate shooting at a Toronto-area synagogue a week earlier on March 2, less than two hours after a Purim event there concluded, while the community’s rabbi was still inside. No injuries were reported.
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