How ordinary people helped victims of Toronto's mass shooting

On Sunday night, Jody Steinhauer was celebrating her birthday with a small group and her boyfriend at Christina’s, a Greek restaurant with windows that open onto the Danforth, a neighbourhood strip in Toronto’s east end filled with businesses and eateries. They were steps away from a small park with a bubbling fountain, Alexander the Great Parkette.

They finished a slice of chocolate cake with a birthday candle, paid the bill and were standing up to leave the restaurant when they heard what sounded like firecrackers.

Screams followed the bangs, and it became clear they were gunshots.

Someone yelled “get down” and they and other customers rushed to the back of the restaurant. Steinhauer yelled for someone to close the sliding garage door that would cover the open windows of the restaurant.

That’s when Steinhauer’s boyfriend, Laurie Gutmann, heard a scream from the street.

“Help! Help! I’ve been shot!”

A shooting spree that would become Toronto’s second mass casualty incident this year was underway. Police say 29-year-old Faisal Hussain opened fired on crowds of people enjoying a summer evening on the Danforth. He killed two people — a 10-year-old girl and 18-year-old Reese Fallon — and injured 13 others. Before the night was over, Hussain was dead.

Like the van attack in North York this April that resulted in 10 deaths, the mass shooting of this past weekend mobilized a massive emergency response. Amid the chaos, ordinary people jumped into action, bravely running out into the street to pull people to safety, attending to wounds, and sheltering victims in their shop.

VICE News spoke to some of those who helped, piecing together a chronology of the terrifying events.

***

Gutmann and a server with red hair didn’t stop to think — they just ran from the safety of the restaurant out into the street to help the woman, who had been shot in the back of her thigh.

“It was pure instinct,” Gutmann said. “It just happened so damn quickly.”

They helped the woman back into the restaurant to safety, but she was panicking and bleeding badly. A woman said, don’t worry, I’m a doctor and so is my husband. The pair began providing first aid. Gutmann said another server, Laura, held the woman’s hand.

Gutmann tried to call 911 but the system was so overloaded that his calls wouldn’t go through. Steinhauer tweeted at media outlets to get help for the woman and try to find out what was happening.

“Police and ambulances were rushing by, but It seemed like an eternity we were waiting [for help]” Gutmann told VICE News. When it seemed safe he went back out into the street to tell an officer in a cruiser there was a victim who needed help.

Soon after, a paramedic arrived to help the woman. He radioed for help and the woman was taken away in an ambulance.

*** While bystanders provided first aid and comfort inside Christina’s, chaos unfolded at the nearby fountain as the shooter moved west along Danforth.

Around 10 p.m., Panaziotis Fetsisk heard shots from Alexander the Great Parkette.

“It was about 20 different times.” First he heard 10 shots, then there was a pause, then about 10 more shots.

“Somebody told me it started from Christina’s restaurant,” he said.

People were running to hide, seeking shelter where they could. “It was a panic.”

He went toward the scene and saw people screaming. Paramedics, police were everywhere. There was a young man, around 18 years old, with blood all over his leg. There was a young woman on the ground.

“They tried to bring her back to life,” he said. “They tried very hard for half an hour, but she never came [back].”

Sophia Konstantinidis, who lives at Ferrier and Danforth, said between 9:50 to 10:20, she saw police and ambulances, so she headed toward the fountain. When she saw the scene, she said, “It was just havoc.”

She saw people there, injured. There was an ambulance. She said paramedics were giving CPR to a victim, who she believed was a young boy in his teens.

At the fountain, they were covering a woman’s body, she said.

A woman, a neighbourhood resident who did not want to give her name, and her family were returning from dinner outside of the neighbourhood Sunday night around 10 p.m.

Her family was getting out of the car at a side street off Danforth when she heard what sounded like firecrackers.

“Noises, quick ones,” she said. “It was bang bang bang bang.”

Her husband ran to the corner of Arundel and Danforth and saw the gunman, dressed in black with a handgun. He ran back to the car, and the family took cover in the car. They hunched down to hide.

She said the gunman was tall and slim, dressed in all black with a handgun.

“We could see him at the corner of Arundel and Danforth shooting toward Papa’s Grill, and then he crossed and went along [Danforth] but you could still hear the shooting.”

She said he was moving west along Danforth.

Her husband went back to the corner and saw the man shooting into different restaurants. Then they ran into the house.

They were unsure if there was just one shooter, or whether there could be more.

“Even though we were so close to the house, we were afraid of going back. And then you saw people running down the lane way. We could see people running back into the restaurants and trying to hide. It was chaotic. And then all of a sudden you saw cops coming everywhere.”

***

Inside Papa’s Grill, at around 9:55 p.m., manager John Klianis heard gunfire in the distance. His last table was about to leave, but he warned them to stay inside. He didn’t want them to go in the wrong direction.

The gunshots moved closer.

Suddenly, three shots rang through the restaurant. He and his customers ran through the kitchen and took cover in the back alley.

When he heard the shots moving away, further west, Klianis came back into the restaurant. They were unsure whether the shooter was still there.

That’s when he realized one of the waiters was lying down on the floor, clutching his bleeding leg.

Klianis directed others to get him clean cloth and apply pressure to the bullet wound. The waiter was in shock, but coherent. “We were around him, talking to him, and keeping him as comfortable as possible.

The manager tried to call 911 but he couldn’t get through.

A couple minutes later, police arrived on the street. Klianis walked out the restaurant door to ask for an ambulance. Startled, one of the officers raised his gun toward the store manager, who immediately put up his hands to signal that he was not a threat.

He tried to convey to the officer: “No no no, I’m a good guy here, I need help, I don’t need to be shot.”

When the officer realized he was not a shooter, he lowered his gun slightly. Klianis asked for an ambulance, and the officer radioed for paramedics.

He said he could understand the officer’s response: “For them, anybody in the middle of the street, they’re concerned. Is somebody going to come out? So they have their guns drawn — God forbid somebody shoots at you, you’re going to defend yourself.”

***

The shooter continued west on Danforth, shooting into Caffe Demetres and Second Cup, moving closer to Skin Deep Tattoo Studio near Danforth and Hampton.

Tanya Wilson was on her way out of her tattoo shop when she saw two people, a mother and her son, running toward her door, trying to get in.

Both of them had been shot in the leg and were hysterical, she said.

“I just brought them downstairs and put on some gloves and tried to take care of it as best I could,” she told CBC's Metro Morning in an interview.

She shut the lights off and locked the doors, unsure what was happening outside.

She grabbed pieces of clothing and tied them above the victims’ wounds really tight, and told them to relax, even though she was “freaking out.”

“Everything was just happening extremely, extremely fast.”

She tried calling 911 but nothing would go through, because everyone else was trying to call too.

Later, after the gunshots stopped, she saw police outside, so she ran and flagged them down and brought them downstairs. They wrapped the victims’ legs with extension cords to stop the bleeding. Paramedics arrived and took them to the hospital.

“I think anybody really would have done the same thing, to be honest,” she said.

***

Gutmann, who helped the woman outside Christina’s, went back to the restaurant on Monday evening to retrieve his car after the street reopened. He checked in at the restaurant and heard that the woman who was shot was going to be OK.

He was “completely relieved” to hear that.

“I’m not a hero,” he said. “it’s not like I went and saved this woman. I helped somebody come in off the street and helped her get the help she needed. …I’m just a normal guy who was helpful and I expect that other people would do the same.”

The waiter at Papa’s Grill has since been released from hospital.

“He’s doing fine, he’s on the mend,” the manager said.

Klianis was back at work Tuesday.

“It’s an isolated incident and people are saying, my life goes on. …But it’s going to be difficult. It’s something you’ll never forget.”

Cover image: Mark Blinch/The Canadian Press