Canada

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

A man is attended to on the scene and loaded onto a gurney for transport following a shooting that left 19 injured and two dead in Toronto late Monday, July 16, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Toronto Star - Rick Madonik

Toronto police were sending reinforcements Tuesday to a diverse east-end neighbourhood as they vowed to relentlessly root out the gunmen who opened fire at a bustling block party, killing two people and sending two dozen others to hospital.

About 200 people were at the barbecue held outside a community housing complex Monday night when gunmen started shooting after an altercation in what police are calling the worst incident of gun violence in the city's recent history.

Homicide detectives identified the two people killed as 14-year-old Shyanne Charles of Toronto and 23-year-old Joshua Yasay of Ajax.

Police said 23 others were sent to hospital with gunshot wounds, including a 22-month-old child who was grazed by a bullet and is in stable condition. One person was trampled in the stampede that followed.

Some of the wounded, aged between one and 33 years old, have been treated and released. One man remains in critical condition in hospital, police said.

Messages of grief quickly appeared on social media even as some hinted the deaths could spur more violence.

"The hood gained another angel to look over us, RIP," one person wrote on Twitter.

Police Chief Bill Blair said police suspect the shooting was gang related.

"We believe from information that we have received to date that this altercation involved two individuals and as a result there was an exchange of gunfire," Blair said at a news conference.

A "significant" number of officers were deployed to the community Tuesday and Blair said they would remain for several weeks to soothe residents left shaken and fearful by the attack.

Blair said police have received "some co-operation" from witnesses at the scene, and called on all community members who attended the party to help with the investigation.

Police also asked for anyone with video or photos of the incident to send them in.

"I'm here today to make an appeal through you all, to the many hundreds of people who were present at the event yesterday who may have some information relevant to this investigation to come forward," Blair said.

"We are very concerned not only with the quick resolution and solving of this crime but the potential for retaliatory violence, which we often see in this type of event," Blair said.

One injured "person of interest" is in custody, Blair said.

The incident took place before 11 p.m. on Danzig Street near Morningside Avenue and Lawrence Avenue East.

The street was still strewn with empty water bottles and other remnants of the party on Tuesday, as swaths of police tape surrounded the area.

Shannon Longshaw said the party, which she helped organize, started as an afternoon barbecue for neighbourhood kids. But even as the crowd grew later in the day, she said the festivities stayed friendly — until shots suddenly rang out.

"There was no fighting, nobody got into an altercation, none of that," she said Tuesday morning, after spending much of the night being questioned by officers.

Bruce Strachan has lived in the area his whole life, but said he's now thinking of moving away.

"This is shocking," he said, watching police comb over the scene.

"I've got my two granddaughters living with me here. I brought them up from Trinidad to be safe from this type of violence and it's right around my corner."

Tears shone in one man's eyes as he recalled walking out of a friend's house and into the crowded celebration just moments before violence erupted.

"I saw people running, I heard 'crack, crack' and I hit the ground," said the man, who did not want to be identified out of concern for his safety.

"It was like a Quentin Tarantino movie," he said, calling it the most frightening thing he had ever seen in more than four decades in the neighbourhood.