A pregnant woman and her unborn baby, killed in a suspected case of “wrong place, wrong time.”

Three members of the same family slain in their Scarborough home, allegedly at the hands of a son and brother with a bizarre criminal past.

A glut of targeted shootings with possible gang connections, including the midday shooting of Marcus Gibson in his home in South Riverdale.

Sixty-nine people were victims of homicide in Toronto in 2016, a sizable jump in total murders in the city compared with the past few years: 56 homicides in 2015, and 57 in both 2013 and 2014.

The uptick in homicides, part of what Toronto police say is a broader trend across North America, still comes short of the numbers seen a decade ago. The tally reached 86 in 2007 and 80 in 2005.

Fatal shootings have been declining gradually since a spike in 2005, when 52 of 80 homicides were shootings. But Toronto police statistics show a marked increase in shootings last year over 2015.

In 2016, there were 40 fatal shootings, up from 26 in 2015 and 27 in 2014. Shootings causing injuries have also seen a jump, from 132 in 2015 to 151 in 2016.

However, fatal stabbings decreased in 2016, with just nine compared with 18 in 2015.

In a recent interview, Chief Mark Saunders said he believes Toronto is still one of the safest cities in North America.

“The sky is not falling,” he said. “Having said that, I still respect the loss of life and the fact that just one life lost is something that we take seriously.”

Noting there is no simple fix to the “incredibly complex” problem, Saunders said officers are working to get the weapons off the street. He said 900 guns were seized in 2016.

“We need to look at the system as a whole, and not just the enforcement piece. At the front end, we’ve got at-risk young men who have not yet put that gun in hand. What programs can we put in place to help prevent (their getting guns)?

“At the back end, when they have made that mistake . . . right now we’re just letting them out, and what are they going to do now that they’ve got a criminal record and they’ve got no hope? They are going to resort back to violence,” Saunders said.

Emphasis must also be placed on stopping weapons from coming into the city at all, Saunders said. As reported by the Star, Toronto police sent a memo to city staff this summer, flagging serious “gaps” that have turned domestic firearms trafficking into a “very real problem in Canada.”

Only a few years ago, approximately 70 per cent of guns used in Toronto crimes originated from the United States, and just 30 per cent were domestically sourced. According to the memo, those figures of illicit guns have now shifted to roughly 50/50; guns obtained domestically are either stolen from legal owners or obtained through “straw purchases,” when a licensed buyer sells a gun on the black market.

“The numbers change a little back and forth but domestically sourced guns have become more available, both hand guns and long guns,” reads the memo, dated July 22, 2016.

Mayor John Tory last month sent a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, urging him to close an “obvious gap” in firearms regulation.

“To put it simply, I want to get the guns out of the hands of those who choose to do harm and are hell-bent on disrupting our peaceful city,” Tory wrote.

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According to statistics compiled by the Star from police data and news reports, the average age of a homicide victim in 2016 was 35, the same as 2015.

Ten of last year’s homicide victims were women, among them Elana Fric-Shamji, a respected family doctor whose husband is charged with first-degree murder in her death; Sylvia Consuelo, who was brutally sexually assaulted, beaten and found dead in her Jamestown area apartment and Peggy Smith, a 61-year-old grandmother who police believe wasn’t her killer’s intended target.

Four people died in interactions with Toronto police in 2016. Devon LaFleur, 30, Alex Wettlaufer, 21, and a still-unidentified man were shot dead by police. Rui Nabico, 31, died after a Toronto police officer used a Taser against him.

The four deaths are under investigation by the Special Investigations Unit, the civilian police watchdog that probes deaths involving police. These deaths are not included in the 2016 homicide total.

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca

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