Toronto police say a fatal shooting of one of their officers is related to an ongoing investigation into a national security incident at the United States consulate earlier this year, which was itself allegedly connected to an Iranian-backed group.
Early on Thursday morning, Const. Marc Pinizzotto was shot and killed while executing a search warrant in the area of Trethewey and Black Creek drives in the west of the city.
Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw said that the search warrant was related to the March 10 shooting at the U.S. consulate on University Avenue.
The incident, which was deemed by Canadian authorities to be a national security case, sparked investigations by the RCMP.
It was linked by authorities in the U.S. to an alleged international campaign from Iranian-backed groups against targets in Europe and North America. After that shooting, an Iraqi national was arrested in the U.S. and charged with terrorism offences.
U.S. prosecutors alleged Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi and others were behind the Toronto attack, as well as a second attack targeting a synagogue in Canada, while also coordinating nearly 20 attacks across Europe tied to an Iranian-backed militant network.
They claimed Al-Saadi had a role as a senior member of Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
According to the unsealed U.S. criminal complaint, prosecutors alleged Al-Saadi and others “planned, coordinated, and claimed responsibility” for at least 18 terrorist attacks across Europe, along with “two additional attacks in Canada.”
“In Europe, we have our guys; even in America, for example, the other day, and in Canada we have our guys,” Al-Saadi allegedly said during an April 1 recorded call cited in the filing.
On Thursday, Demkiw suggested his officers had been following up on leads related to that shooting through a coordinated series of search warrants across the city.
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“The investigation that led to the search warrant, where Police Const. Marc Pinizzotto was tragically killed concerned a number of shootings, including a shooting at the United States consulate,” he said.
“There were several search warrants executed this morning across the Toronto area.”
While Demkiw linked the search warrants to the shooting at the U.S. consulate, he did not explicitly link the suspects on Thursday or the shooting of the officer to the broader U.S. investigation and its conclusions about Iran.
Global News’ crime commentator and former Toronto police officer Hank Idsinga explained that, even if investigations into the consulate shooting may involve other agencies, local police are still best positioned to execute search warrants.
“The RCMP definitely has an involvement here, as does the Department of Homeland Security and possibly the FBI, but the consulate shooting was still within the City of Toronto and the Toronto investigative units would be right in the thick of things, if not leading it,” he said.
“If they’re executing multiple search warrants at the same time, that’s right up the alley of the Toronto Police Services Emergency Task Force units. They can bring in multiple teams at once to execute those warrants rather than bringing in multiple RCMP teams and they know the city, they know the addresses that they’re dealing with.”
Jack Cunningham, assistant professor in the international relations program at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, said it was “not a stretch at all” to suspect the search warrants were related to groups backed by Iran.
“They are armed, they’re not necessarily disciplined, although sometimes they are able to display a certain amount of discipline. But they are certainly dangerous,” he said of Iranian-backed groups.
“That’s why this was the kind of search work; it was executed early in the morning rather than in daytime hours. That indicated an awareness that this was a high-risk operation.”
Earlier in the day, Pete Hoekstra, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, had revealed to a crowd at the 2026 U.S.-Canada Summit in Toronto that the shooting was linked to the United States.
“Our thoughts, our prayers are with the family of the police person who was killed. They are with the police community, law enforcement community in Toronto and Ontario, and I think it exemplifies and is an example of the close co-operation we have in law enforcement between the two countries, how we work together and the risk involved in those types of activities,” he said.
“Our thoughts and prayers and sympathies to the people who may be, we are all affected by this, so let’s remember them today as we move forward.”
Even before the United States and Israel began conducting attacks on Iran back in February, experts have warned of attacks from proxies.
In the summer of 2025, Canada, the U.S. and various European countries issued a statement condemning what they said was a “growing number of state threats” by Iran’s intelligence services against people abroad, including dissidents, journalists and Jewish citizens of their countries.
The joint statement issued by the U.S. State Department called attempts by Iran to “kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America” a “clear violation” of those nations’ sovereignty.
Cunningham said Iran has “a number of terrorist cells” operating in North America.
“They’re generally relatively small, operate with a fair degree of autonomy,” he said.
“Remember, the Iranian regime is in many ways sort of a death cult. It promulgates an ethos of martyrdom, dying in the service of the state, dying in the service of the Iranian cause is a noble thing.”
Away from the potential link between the U.S. consulate shooting and Iran, the Canadian Cyber Security Centre has warned Canadian critical infrastructure operators to be “vigilant” for the risk of cyberattacks as the Iran war escalates.
Back in March, the Canadian government shared a cyber threat bulletin, stating that “Iran will very likely use its cyber program to respond to the joint U.S. and Israel combat operations against Iran.”
The bulletin added that “Canadian critical infrastructure operators and other possible targeted entities should remain vigilant to threats posed by cyber actors aligned with Iranian interests.”
— with files from Global News’ Prisha Dev and Aaron D’Andrea