Mayor John Tory says “painstaking police work” needs to be done in order for the city to stop gun and gang related deaths like Candice Rochelle Bobb and her premature baby boy.

Tory made the comments to reporters on Monday morning as he announced a city initiative to implement traffic officers at busy Toronto intersections.

“I just had a new granddaughter born a week or so ago,” Tory said. “To think that that tiny baby was born in those circumstance and that he died a few weeks into his life… it just shouldn’t happen in this city.”

Candice Rochelle Bobb was about five months pregnant when the car she was riding in was shot at several times on May 15.

According to police, Bobb and three others had just left a basketball game when they stopped in the Jamestown area to drop off a passenger. At around 11 p.m., another vehicle approached theirs and opened fire.

Bobb -- the only person injured in the shooting - was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Her child was delivered via emergency C-section and transferred to Sunnybrook Hospital where he remained in stable condition for several weeks.

On Sunday evening, Bobb’s family issued a statement through Toronto police that said the baby boy passed away shortly after 7 p.m.

“Who goes around just randomly shooting people in cars? Who goes around shooting bullets into a house in the east end of Toronto this weekend?” Tory said alluding to an incident on Saturday where a 10-year-old boy was struck by a bullet while asleep in his east end home.

“The answer is not people who have anything to do with the way we live in this city.” 

Tory's comments come after a violent weekend in city where three separate stabbings sent six people to hospital and three separate shootings left one dead and a 10-year-old boy

Tory said that the city needs to “redouble” its efforts in order prevent incidents like this, but that there is no easy solution.

“I wish I could stand here and say that I have a card I can pull from my pocket that holds the solution, or a magic wand I could wave, but this requires painstaking police work which our police service is doing,”
he said.

“This stuff is unacceptable, it is frustrating, it is heartbreaking when you see things happening such as we’ve seen happening in the city and it’s not part of what is still a very safe city -- and we’re going to keep it that way.”

Tory added that he is working with the federal government to address the number of firearms coming into the city.

“There is work that I am trying to do as well, with respect to guns coming into the city, with respect to trying to get more money from other governments for programs for kids over the summer so that they’re positively occupied,” he said.

Bobb’s death has sparked a larger conversation around the recent increase in gun violence in the city.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters days after the shooting that the area where Bobb was shot has been at the centre of increased police efforts, much of which has targeted gun violence. 

According to Saunders, 50 per cent of shootings that occur in that area are gang related.

Police said that homicide investigators and crown attorneys will be responsible for determining how the death of Bobb’s baby will change the investigation and if it will be now considered a double homicide.

Police are still urging anyone with information pertaining to the shooting to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Toronto police at 416-808-3300 or Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS.