Gunman Shoots Out Windows of Jewish Restaurant on Passover Night

A gunman fired 14 shots into a Jewish-owned restaurant on Avenue Road in North York just after midnight on the second night of Passover, shattering the front windows and sending bullets toward the kitchen doorway before disappearing into the street without injuring anyone inside.

Toronto police responded to the Avenue Road and Brooke Avenue intersection at approximately 1:28 a.m. Friday. Surveillance video captured a single suspect crossing Avenue Road shortly before 1:30 a.m., pulling out a firearm and unloading multiple rounds into the restaurant from outside. The gunfire tore through the front glass and reached the interior, with at least one bullet trajectory aimed toward the doorway leading into the kitchen.

The restaurant is connected to the same chain as Old Avenue Restaurant, a Jewish-owned Azerbaijani cuisine establishment near Dufferin Street and Steeles Avenue West that was shot at on March 2, 2026. That earlier attack came on the same night gunfire also struck Temple Emanu-El synagogue and the York Entrepreneurship Development Institute.

The Toronto Police Service's Gun and Gangs Unit is leading the investigation and has increased patrols in the area. Investigators are probing the shooting as a potential hate crime.

Israel's Consul General in Toronto, Idit Shamir, called the attack "not random" and "part of a growing and dangerous pattern of antisemitic violence," noting the business is owned by "a prominent and activist member of the Jewish community." Community member Sharlene Wilder, speaking to CTV News, was more direct: "Antisemitism, Jew hatred. Call it what you want. It has been normalized in our community, and this is a perfect example of normalization, that people now think it's okay to walk up to a Jewish owned facility, restaurant, any Jewish owned business, and fire at it."

Some Jewish community leaders who would typically respond publicly said they were observing Passover and planned to issue statements afterward.

Friday's shooting came at the tail end of a brutal stretch for Toronto's Jewish community. In the first week of March alone, three GTA synagogues were struck by gunfire: Temple Emanu-El in North York on March 2; Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto in Thornhill on March 6; and Shaarei Shomayim in North York on March 7, the last two within 20 to 30 minutes of each other. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned those attacks as "criminal antisemitic attacks." Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre stated: "The Jewish Community is under attack in Canada." Toronto Deputy Mayor Mike Colle, who represents the heavily Jewish Eglinton-Lawrence division, called for more boots on the ground to stop "this horrific, antisemitic violence."

The numbers behind the pattern are striking. Since October 7, 2023, Jewish sites in Toronto have been hit at least 18 times. Toronto police made 309 arrests and laid 858 charges related to hate crimes in that same period. By early March 2026, antisemitic incidents already accounted for 63 percent of all reported hate crime occurrences in the city. B'nai Brith Canada recorded 6,219 antisemitic incidents across the country in 2024, roughly 17 per day. One estimate from Israel's Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism put the national increase at 670 percent since October 7.

Canada's Jewish community numbers roughly 400,000 people, about 1.4 percent of the population, yet they are the targets of an estimated 70 percent of religion-based hate crimes in the country. The glass that needs sweeping off the floor at Avenue Road and Brooke Avenue is the most recent evidence of where that disparity leads.