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Pregnant Toronto Woman Shot Dead in Car, Baby Delivered in Emergency C-section

Police say the car she was in was the intended target of the shooting.

This incident marks the city's 29th homicide of 2016. Photo by author.

A pregnant Toronto woman is dead and her baby is in the hospital after she was the victim of a drive-by shooting Sunday night.

Candace Rochelle Bobb, a 35-year-old woman from Missisauga, was pronounced dead at Etobicoke General Hospital shortly before midnight Sunday after she was shot in the chest while riding in a car in the northwest Toronto neighbourhood of Rexdale. Only five months along, the victim's baby was delivered via an emergency C-section and has been transferred to another hospital where the baby is in stable condition. Although the vehicle was hit by multiple shots, the three other people in the car were not hurt. According to Det. Sgt. Mike Carbon, the car was returning from a basketball game and when the driver stopped to drop off one of the occupants, someone opened fire on the vehicle. The only shot to hit someone struck Bobb, who was in the back seat at the time. Police have not yet revealed a motive for the shooting, but Carbon said that the car was the intended target. Toronto Police told VICE that shell cases at the scene of the shooting—around the intersection of John Garland Boulevard and Jamestown Crescent—have been recovered by police. The news comes in the wake of a sharp increase in the number of shootings this year—128 incidents with 168 victims as of May 9, according to the Toronto Police shooting tracker. The 18 shooting deaths so far are triple what they were in 2015, and the total number of shootings are nearly double. Carbon said that, as of today, this is the city's 29th homicide of 2016. Read more: Toronto's Police Union Boss Denies 'Systemic Racism' Charge in Latest Ridiculous Rant "The number of shootings have increased dramatically [this year over the last few years], would indicate that [there's more guns on the street]." Supt. Ron Taverner told reporters Monday. While the police force hasn't officially pinned the blame on anything, Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, told VICE in February that he attributes the rise in shootings to an increase in overall criminal activity. McCormack believes the increase in shootings stems from the police's inability to continue their controversial practice of "carding" due to a provincial moratorium on the procedure. McCormack bases this belief off anecdotes from officers (he has no data to back up his claim), despite the procedure being hotly contested by those who see it as a practice rooted in arbitrary racial profiling. Carbon is asking the public for any information on the incident and told reporters the police will be looking into cameras in the area for more information. VICE will update this story as it progresses. Follow Jake Kivanç on Twitter.