

Chris Herhalt, CP24.com





Police say they found a man murdered in the driver’s seat of a car parked near a home in Richmond Hill’s Oak Ridges neighbourhood on Thursday morning.

York Regional Police say that at 6:50 a.m., they were called to the driveway of a home in the Bayswater Avenue and Emily Court area, west of Wilcox Lake, where they found the body of a man in the driver’s seat of a car.

Const. Laura Nicolle said that “circumstances here involving the death led investigators to confidently say we are looking at a homicide.”

The man has not yet been identified and investigators are still working to determine his cause of death.

A man claiming to be the victim’s uncle told CP24 his nephew was a construction worker who lived near the Air Canada Centre in downtown Toronto.

He said that nephew’s roommates were tied up by unknown assailants last night and a dog was killed.

Toronto police say they are investigating a home invasion that took place near the Air Canada Centre overnight, and a dog was killed in the incident.

Neither York or Toronto police would link the downtown Toronto home invasion to the Richmond Hill homicide on Thursday.

“Right now we are very early in this investigation and we need some help from the community. We need them to work with us and tell us whether they may have seen or heard anything suspicious,” Nicolle told CP24. “Our officers have the scene blocked off here and we will be in the neighbourhood for quite some time.”

Nicolle said officers are working on the assumption that the man was targeted based on the circumstances of his death, but she would not elaborate.

She said that officers are currently going door to door in the neighbourhood.

She confirmed that a drone was also brought in to get a wider look at the scene and search the surrounding area for possible evidence.

“We try to utilize everything we have at our disposal to map out the area ad get an idea for the layout of the scene,” she said.

Police are asking nearby homeowners to turn over any surveillance video they may have.

Anyone who witnessed anything in the area on Thursday morning is asked to call police at 1-866-876-5423, ext. 7865.