Canadian man accused of killing 5 had beef with condo board

TORONTO — Canadian police identified the man who shot and killed five people and wounded another at a suburban Toronto condominium as a 73-year-old resident of the building and said three of the five people he killed were on the condo board.

During a news conference Monday, Chief James MacSween of the York Regional Police identified the suspect in Sunday night’s attack in Vaughan, Ontario, as Francesco Velli. He said Velli fatally shot three men and two women and wounded a 66-year-old woman, who is hospitalized.

“Three victims were members of the condominium board,” he said.

Police said officers were called to an active shooting at the building at around 7:20 p.m. Sunday, and that an officer fatally shot Velli inside the building, which is where Velli and the victims lived.

Veilli had a long-running dispute with the condo board and thought the building’s electrical room was making him sick, and that board members and the building’s developer were to blame, court documents show.

MacSween said police are still investigating the motive for the attack, which occurred at three separate units in the building.

Special Investigation Unit spokesperson Kristy Denette said police found the victims on different floors. She said Velli had a semiautomatic handgun and that investigators don’t believe he exchanged fire with the officer who killed him.

On Sunday and days leading up to the attack, Velli posted rambling videos on Facebook in which he talked about a legal dispute he had with the condo board.

In the videos, he claimed to have health problems caused by the building’s electrical room. The posts include recordings of phone conversations he had with lawyers involved in his case. In one video he posted Sunday, the lawyer for the building noted that the condo corporation had asked him to sell his unit and move out.

“This tragedy is driving me insane. I’m ill anyways,” he said.

The lawyer noted there was an online court hearing in his case scheduled for Monday and that he needed to go to the condo management office, where the manager would help him log in.

Velli claimed during the call that he was not prepared to present his case during the hearing. He also asked what the board wanted from him, to which the lawyer said it needed him to stop harassing and shouting at people, and to pay the condo corporation’s legal fees. She noted that the case had dragged on for years.

“Can I die in peace? (It’s been) seven years of torture,” Velli said.

In one video, he said: “They want me dead. You can take this body but never this soul. .. I am ready to die.”

Velli filed a lawsuit against six directors and officers of the board in 2020 alleging that they “committed acts of crime and criminality from 2010 onwards.”

He also accused them of deliberately causing him five years of “torment” and “torture” related to issues he had with the electrical room below his unit, court documents show. Justice Joseph Di Luca tossed the lawsuit this summer, calling it “frivolous” and “vexatious.”

According to court documents, the board sought a restraining order in 2018 against Velli for his “allegedly threatening, abusive, intimidating and harassing behavior” toward the board, property management, workers and residents.

Resident John Santoro said Monday that he knew Velli had a firearms acquisitions certificate but that he didn’t know if Velli actually owned a gun. He said he also knew about Velli’s issues with the condo board.

“I know the history and I know the man. I know the board of directors. I know this has been brewing for a long time. And I’ve commented to my wife several times that this is going to end very badly,” Santoro said.

Mass shootings are rare in Canada, and Toronto has long prided itself as being one of the world’s safest big cities. Vaughan is just north of Toronto.

Canadians are nervous about anything that might indicate they are moving closer to the gun violence situation in the U.S., where mass shootings are common.

“Everybody is horrified,” Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca said. “To wake up to this news this morning or see it last night, we are in absolute shock. … This is something I never thought I would see here.”