During a news conference announcing the arrest of a teen in the “senseless” fatal shooting of eight-year-old JahVai Roy last month, Toronto’s police chief addressed a concerning trend that is impacting communities across the city.
“We’ve been raising the alarm for the last couple of years around the rise of violence amongst young people,” Chief Myron Demkiw told reporters last week.
He pointed to a “dramatic rise” in the number of young people being arrested with illegal firearms and noted that more than a dozen young people had been charged in murder investigations in Toronto in 2025 alone.
