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Rob Ford has broken his silence on the gangland murder of Anthony Smith, the young man in the infamous picture with the Toronto mayor in front of a police-described crack house.

Smith was shot dead outside of a downtown Toronto club last March. On Tuesday, a second man charged in the slaying had his charges stayed. Nisar Hashimi plead guilty to manslaughter in July.

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The mayor has been tied to the case since the release of the photo during the crack pipe video scandal, but Ford calls the fact that everyone in the picture, besides him, has been killed or arrested, a “coincidence” and has called for the rumours to stop.

“It pisses me off,” the mayor told the Toronto Sun‘s Joe Warmington, virtually the only Toronto print journalist who still gets one-on-one time with Ford. “I had nothing to do with it.”

The case drew widespread attention due to the picture that was handed out in relation to initial crack video reports. The photo shows a smiling Ford with Smith (deceased), Mohammad Khattak (since arrested) and Monir Kasim (since arrested). Smith and Khattak are both alleged members of the Dixon City Bloods and both Khattak and Kasim have since been charged with drug trafficking following a massive police operation last June.