Police east of Toronto say they have arrested a 14-year-old boy and lifted a shelter-in-place order after a “sadistic and cowardly” stabbing that left a woman dead in a Pickering, Ont., neighbourhood.
At around 5:40 p.m. on Thursday, police issued the emergency alert telling residents near 2125 Lynn Heights Dr. in Pickering to shelter in place.
The alert was triggered after a stabbing in the area around 3 p.m., when an elderly woman was attacked by a male suspect, whom police said she did not know. The woman was rushed to a trauma centre in the Toronto area, where she succumbed to her injuries.
Durham Regional Police Chief Peter Moreira said officers had no knowledge of a motive for the attack, which he called “sadistic and cowardly.”
For hours after the arrest, police said they had not arrested the suspect, nor did they know where he was. They told residents to stay inside, saying he had fled the scene on foot and remained armed.
The emergency alert was followed by the news that the City of Pickering would shutter its community centres, libraries and other facilities to observe the shelter-in-place order.
“All scheduled City programs and classes are also cancelled until further notice,” the city said in a brief statement.
At around 8:45 p.m., roughly three hours after the emergency alert and almost six hours after the attack itself, police confirmed the arrest of a young teenager.
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“We’re announcing that we’ve arrested a 13-year-old male from Pickering and he’s been arrested by our tactical support unit without incident,” Chief Moreira told reporters.
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“I want to thank the members of our community for sheltering in place and doing exactly what we asked them to do. At this point here, you can go freely about your day-to-day lives.”
Police corrected the accused’s age to 14 on Friday, after he appeared in court.
Moreira said the arrest came because of the number of officers mobilized from his force, Toronto police and the Ontario Provincial Police. He said investigators were still working on charges following the arrest.
Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe said the stabbing was a “shocking day in our city” and said it would affect the whole area.
“The randomness is shocking, but by and large, we are a safe community,” he said. “We have an excellent police service here in our region. We have very robust eyes on the street, road watches, community watches.”
The chief said his officers still believed the attack was random and had not yet been able to establish a connection.
“As you can appreciate, that investigation has just really started in earnest,” Moreira said.
Rare emergency alert issued
Moreira told reporters the attack was captured on video, but the search for the suspect was challenging and included a large area.
The area where the stabbing took place is the edge of a small subdivision in the northwest part of Pickering. Beside the police tape is a large woodland area without roads, while above it is a massive transformer station.
Durham police said they searched the area using a helicopter, drone and both the K9 and tactical units.
The emergency alert, issued both inside and outside of Pickering, is an extremely rare step for police to take in either a homicide or stabbing attack.
Before the arrest was made, Moreira said he made the decision to issue the alert out of an abundance of caution because police didn’t know where the suspect was, nor did they have a motive for the attack.
“The information, as investigations unfold, often suggests a motive or point to a particular individual or reason why this happened. We had none of that in this case,” he said.
“And I didn’t want to leave it to chance, and so we took some unusual steps here today, where we’re bringing out the resources we need.”
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