TORONTO

Only in Toronto could 20 people witness a man having his penis cut off followed by five gunshots and no one saw or heard anything.

Not surprising since ‘snitches end up with stitches’ is Toronto’s street motto.

In this bloody incident, just before 4 a.m. Saturday on Mercer St. near John St., there’s now two men in hospital with stitches — one set sewed back a man’s severed penis. The other victim had major surgery to repair the damage caused by a bullet going into his stomach.

Toronto Police said in a news release Tuesday: “During the fight, a man from the first group stabbed a 38-year-old man from the second group” and “a man from the first group then shot a 26-year-old man from the second group.”

The stabbed man jumped on a rented party bus before being rushed to hospital. An ambulance came to save the gunshot victim — four of the other shots could have ricochetted into the windows of a condo building.

It is believed the shooter fled on foot. Police have released a photograph of a suspect who they describe as a “black man ... wearing a red puffy, down-filled jacket, dark pants, and a dark shirt.”

Since there are no snitches, the shooter and stabber are both at large.

“About 20 witnesses were right there and said they saw nothing,” said Det.-Const. Chris Hominuk, of Toronto Police’s 52 Division. “Some said they were sleeping on the bus, but it is kind of hard to sleep through five gunshots.”

Or to enjoy a peaceful slumber with the shrieking sounds of a man losing his penis.

“The victim of the stabbing suffered grievous, life-changing injuries,” is all Hominuk would confirm.

But other police sources tell me this man was attacked after someone got upset over something said to some females who were part of a group on a licensed party bus that had originated in Vaughan.

“The doctors did work hard to reattach his penis,” said a source.

Luckily for him, while his own friends and other Entertainment District revellers seemed to miss this terrifying mayhem outside a club, a man from Chicago saw everything and wasn’t going to cover up such a crime for any silly unwritten rule from Toronto’s mean streets.

“The visitor was terrific,” said Hominuk. “He said he’s from Chicago, where there have been more than 3,000 shootings this year and tens of thousands in his life, and he’d never seen one until he came to Toronto.”

Unlike those who are in essence aiding and abetting dangerous people, this man did the right thing.

Thanks, in part, to the evil street code there’s been 59 homicides so far in 2016 compared to 42 at this time last year. Toronto’s 59th murder, of an American tourist, happened on the same night as this violence — just north in Little Italy. So far this year Toronto has had 359 shootings compared to 248 at this time in 2015. It’s a 45% increase. We have seen 514 shooting victims, up 93% over last year’s 266.

Of our homicides, 33 of them have been by gun — which is 12 more than this time last year or 57%. As for people wounded in shootings, we have now had 199 compared to 51 in 2015. That’s an almost 290% increase.

It’s obscene. It’s not just the people on the party bus who should wake up. Still, this incident is, sadly, routine. There’s a shooting in Toronto every day now.

And many stabbings too.

Obviously, police are asking for assistance in helping identify the suspects in the Entertainment District melee on Saturday.

“There are people who know who both of these suspects are,” Hominuk said.

If they can’t help police when a man loses his privates, what the hell could ever urge empathy from people?

jwarmington@postmedia.com