The victim of the city’s first homicide of the year has been identified as 21-year-old Ahmed Yakot, of Toronto.

The young man died following a double shooting in Regent Park late on New Year’s Day.

Police were called to the area of River and Oak streets at 10:30 p.m. for reports of multiple gunshots.

They found Yakot with life-threatening injuries and another man, also 21, with serious, but not critical, injuries. Both men were rushed to hospital, where Yakot died.

Police say the two men were shot at by suspects in a dark-coloured sedan that fled the scene.

At the scene Thursday morning, officers could be seen combing a nearby housing complex as several residents stopped by on the first work day of 2020.

Several police bullet markers could be seen on a fence behind which photos were taken hours earlier showing a parked black sedan riddled with bullet holes.

That car had since been removed from the scene.

Sandra Persaud, who lives in the nearby housing complex, said she was home when she heard a series of loud explosions. “I thought I heard fireworks,” she said.

She said she is increasingly concerned about the state of gun violence in Toronto, which hit record levels last year.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I have three young boys and we could have been outside last night.”

“We have to hope that things will get better.”

Tariq Ehsan Ullah, a store clerk at a nearby River Street grocery, arrived at work to find the area outside the store cordoned off by police tape.

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He said officers told him the shooting happened nearby on Oak Street.

“Luckily, nothing happened inside the store,” he said, standing behind the counter. “When I arrived at work around 7 a.m., they had the area cordoned off. I had to wait to enter the store.”

The New Year’s Day shooting comes after Toronto’s bloodiest year for gun violence in 2019.

As of 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, 292 people had been killed or injured in shootings in the city, 56 more than the previous year, which, itself, set a record for the most people shot the15 years police data covers.

With files from Ilya Bañares and May Warren