Toronto police confirmed Monday that they have arrested Shayne MacDonald, the man wanted for second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of his aunt, Sarah Vermelhudo.

He was arrested downtown, and is now charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder, Constable David Hopkinson said Monday.

The 21-year-old MacDonald was considered “violent, armed and dangerous” after the double stabbing on College St. on Friday that left Vermelhudo, 38, dead and her mother, Maria Vermelhudo, 59, injured.

Maria was treated and released from St. Michael’s Hospital on Dec. 17.

One of MacDonald’s friends, Gustavo Mesquita, said he grew up with him, lived in the same building as him when young and has known him for 12 to 15 years. Mesquita said he was in “absolute shock” when the police named his friend as a murder suspect.

Mesquita and MacDonald went to Givins/Shaw Junior Public School and Alexander Muir/Gladstone Avenue High School together. He said he knows the suspect as soft-spoken, kind, well-mannered and polite — with no violent personality.

“Absolutely, absolutely not,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him angry. Or upset. He was always very calm, and really kind, quiet. It was so shocking to me that he was a suspect in a murder, and his aunt nonetheless. It left me speechless. It was not something I would ever expect from him at all.”

At Sarah Vermelhudo’s College St. house — the scene of the crime — the yellow police tape was gone and, seemingly, every light in the house switched on. But knocking on the door received no answer. A Santa Claus cutout looked down on the street from an upper storey window.

Earlier in July, Sarah Vermelhudo had posted a photo and describing her goals as a life coach.

“I am a highly sensitive person, and I’ve learned to own that by empowering myself. By Not letting the criticism of others to make me lose my natural gifts, lose my intuition, and most importantly lose my (true) self!” she wrote.

On Friday at around 8 p.m., MacDonald dropped by the house where the two women lived, said Det. Sgt. Graham Gibson. The visit was described as normal but a sudden argument was followed by Vermelhudo being stabbed, and when her parents tried to help, her mother also was stabbed too.

With files from Sammy Hudes