Toronto deputy mayor urges police to release more details about street festival shooting

Police officers and other law enforcement personnel are seen at the intersection of St. Clair West and Arlington Avenue, near the site of a shooting that occurred at the Salsa on St. Clair Festival in Toronto on the evening of July 11, 2026. Photo by LAURA PROCTOR /AFP via Getty Images

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Toronto Police have “good clear video” of what happened during the shootings at the Salsa on St. Clair festival, according to the city’s Deputy Mayor Mike Colle, who is frustrated police have not released more details about what actually happened.

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He said he learned this from shopkeepers on the strip of St. Clair Avenue West who handed over the videos from their security cameras.

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The shootings took place Saturday night around 8 p.m., leaving two people dead, five injured, a neighbourhood traumatized, and the future of Toronto’s enthusiastic hosting of street festivals in an uneasy doubt.

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The men killed were targeted and known to each other, police said, but they have declined to say whether either or both were among the shooters, or whether they may have killed each other. Shaquan Quashie, 25, and Cesar Vernaza, 20, both died of their gunshot wounds, one at the scene and the other in hospital.

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Toronto Police Service Chief Myron Demkiw said on Monday police can only confirm the names of the two deceased, the fact police believe they were targeted as opposed to random victims, and that two guns were “recovered at the scene.” He made a point of sharing statistics that shootings are down in Toronto this year by 26 per cent.

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News that the St. Clair shootings have been captured on clear video is likely to increase pressure on police to clarify the potential role played by the two dead men, especially now that community vigils have been held, Colle said.

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“You should check before you have a vigil to see who the vigil is about, and are these people worthy of a vigil,” Colle said, calling it a “slap in the face” to residents and trampled bystanders.

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Toronto police have identified, from left, Shaquan Quashie, 25, and Cesar Vernaza, 20, as the two people killed during a shooting incident at the city’s Salsa on St. Clair street festival. Several other people were injured also. Photo by Toronto Police Service

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The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday that both men lived in the same west end neighbourhood, that Quashie has pleaded guilty to possessing a prohibited firearm, and Vernaza has pleaded guilty to possessing cars obtained by crime

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Colle said this came to him as no surprise.

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“Everybody’s got these proposals about how to make these festivals safer, how to bring in more police, more fencing, etc. Those are all well intentioned but in the long run we need to deal with the root problem here, out of control people who have handguns and will have a total disregard for anybody else to basically play out their gangland feuds,” Colle said. “That is what we’ve got to deal with.”

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The Toronto Police Service’s emphasis on Toronto’s safety, in the absence of hardly any new detail about these crimes, has caused unrest in the few days since the shootings.

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Councillor Brad Bradford, who is a candidate for mayor in this fall’s election, also said at a press conference that police were “tone deaf” to emphasize Toronto’s safety during such an urgent and unresolved investigation.