Dayne Rose bullet-riddled body found on a busy Toronto highway
Homicide detectives investigating the slaying of a man who was shot and ejected from a luxury car along a busy stretch of Highway 401 have plenty of eyewitness reports of the incident but few strong leads, a police source said Wednesday.Dayne Rose, born in Canada but with ties to Jamaica, was known to Toronto police but had only minor brushes with the law and had no criminal record, a police source told The Globe and Mail.bullet-riddled body found on a busy Toronto highway is that of a 29-year-old man with no criminal record, a police source says.He would have turned 30 next month."He's not a drug dealer, he's not a gang-banger, he's not on the radar," the source told the newspaper.Police were investigating whether Rose was shot before being pushed out of a moving car on Highway 401 in Toronto about 2:45 p.m. Tuesday or whether he jumped out and then was shot, The Toronto Star reported.
Police were unsure if striking the road contributed to Rose's death.
An autopsy was conducted Wednesday night.Police Tuesday seized a luxury Lexus believed connected to the incident and took several people into custody for questioning, but they were later released, The police working theory is that there were three people in the car – Mr. Rose, another man and a woman. But while one witness has described seeing Mr. Rose being shot by a woman who was seated in the back seat on the passenger side, others have disputed that account.
The Lexus is registered to a Mississauga woman whom Mr. Rose knew, and who has been interviewed by police. But she was not in the car at the time and the identity of his two companions remains moot.
“Wouldn't we love to know,” the source said, adding that police are still anxious to speak to anyone else who saw the incident.Tuesday's killing, shortly before rush hour on one of the country's busiest highways, backed up traffic for many kilometres, frustrating tens of thousands of commuters before the road was fully reopened early Wednesday.
The death, Toronto's 49th homicide this year, drew a spirited response from Mayor David Miller, who has long urged the federal government to impose an outright ban on handguns.“People who commit violence in Toronto are going to go to jail and they need to know that. But the sad fact is it is much too easy for them to get guns,” he said.
“That's why this city council is so determined to fight to get handguns off the street.”Premier Dalton McGuinty concurred, saying he too is weary of the violence and that no one should have access to handguns except police.“Handguns are the weapon of choice for the criminal element,” he said. Traffic on Highway 401 returned to near-normal Wednesday as police continued searching for forensic evidence. Cars were at a standstill during the afternoon rush hour and into the evening Tuesday.