Homicide detectives were called to a house in Brampton, Ont., early Tuesday after a man found suffering from gunshot wounds was declared dead. The 50-year-old victim was identified as Louie Caisse, who also used the first name Alfred.
Hours earlier, police said the bullet entered Caisse’s head through the side of his neck. He was taken to a hospital and was pronounced dead at about 1:55 a.m.
Police were conducting a house-to-house sweep of the neighborhood late Monday night.
It’s not yet clear if Caisse knew anyone at the house or how he was killed.
The investigation, dubbed Project Focus, was scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
Police in Brampton – a major suburb northwest of Toronto where the shootings usually take place – said they found Caisse and a second man – a 39-year-old acquaintance – on a back porch. Both men were unarmed.
Police were called to a Brampton home around 2:15 a.m. Friday to investigate a report of shots fired, Constable Andy Pattenden said in a statement. When officers arrived, they found two men who were suffering from gunshot wounds. The victims were taken to hospital and survived.
Police have been conducting investigations into five homicides in Brampton this year, with Caisse’s death coming a week after the departure of a teen girl from her family’s home after she was shot three times in the head.
In her family’s home were “text books on trauma,” as her neighbors and police called the budding entrepreneur. Her parents cleaned and cooked for the stars, said her grandmother, Butch Barksdale.
The 17-year-old was living at the home as part of a family intervention program for girls like her.
Her father and mother couldn’t handle her, said Barksdale, who lives across the street. She had just returned from visiting daughter Stephanie, another teenager who police say died in a tragic 2013 shooting.
“She’s dead in my face,” her grandmother said of her granddaughter, “but I think it was meant to be.”
The two shooting incidents have rekindled a discussion around gun violence in Canada.
Since 2006, the country has registered 1,870 total firearm homicides – a figure that includes incidents of accidental discharges, suicides and homicides, according to figures from Statistics Canada.
The numbers are the lowest Canada has ever seen, reflecting the country’s long decline in crime, from centuries of violent crime that weighed on the psyche of many Canadians.
The statistics suggest a rate of homicides is roughly similar to what it was during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but earlier data suggest Canada’s firearm homicide rate has been more than 50 percent higher than the U.S. rate.
But gun violence remains a potent concern in Canada. At least seven people in Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, have been killed by guns in 2017. That’s more than half the country’s 11 firearm homicides in the country overall, Statistics Canada reports.
When Toronto Mayor John Tory was asked about the number of gun killings in the city, he said that he hoped Canada’s “rich diversity” of people had led to a reduction in gun crimes overall.
“I think it’s because in most of the cases there have been people who do not come from high levels of crime and who have done a good job of saying, ‘I don’t need to die.’ ”
He added: “I want to believe,” and then went on to list crimes where people have made “good, positive choices.”
Police in Brampton said they believed Monday’s homicide “is unrelated to any other incident at this time.”