Toronto police say drugs and robbery are the motives behind the city's latest homicide.

Det. Sgt. Dan Sheppard told reporters at a morning news conference that a surveillance camera captured two people leaving a Scarborough building minutes after entering the complex from another entrance.

In the same time span, a 30-year-old man was gunned down in his ground-floor apartment.

The victim, Alexis Eracleous, was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later.

The shooting happened just after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at 11 Antrim Crescent,  in the Kennedy Road and Highway 401 area.

An aquaintance of the victim was also inside the apartment at the time of the shooting and called 911.

Police say property was taken from the apartment.

"Someone would have had to know what was there," Sheppard said. "I don't think he was randomly picked."

He wouldn't say what was taken but added "it appears drugs was the motivator."

Sheppard said police are investigating who let the suspects into the building.

"We're still going through all the surveillance film," he said.

Sheppard said the suspects were in the building for about three-and-a-half minutes.

The victim, a Centennial College student, lived with his mother but she was at work at the time the murder took place, Sheppard said.

Witnesses

Sheppard said the surveillance video also captured two potential witnesses standing outside the building just before the two suspects exited the premises.

Police think they might be able to provide authorities with information about the suspects and possibly the car they were seen leaving in.

"We are trying to identify these two people with the hopes that they were unknowingly witnesses to this homicide," Sheppard said.

Police say the car appears to be an older model, four-door smaller-sized vehicle that is either dark grey or black. It was last seen driving east on Antrim Crescent.

Investigators spent most of the night canvassing the apartment and the area, speaking to witnesses and collecting evidence.

The two suspects are described as:

  • male, white, in his early 20s, about 130 lbs and 5'6". He was wearing a black baseball hat worn backwards and a dark bomber-length jacket with a fur collar, white runners and jeans
  • male, black, in his early 20s, about 6' tall and 180 lbs. He was wearing rimmed glasses, a black hoodie sweater, black Carhartt jacket, dark pants and Nike shoes. Police allege he was armed with a handgun.

This is Toronto's seventh homicide of the year.