GUILTY Canada - Gabriel Nikov, 18, shot to death, Toronto, 13 April 2016

Toronto police say a man has died after he was shot on Yonge Street, just north of Bloor Street, in the heart of downtown Toronto on Wednesday night.

Witnesses tell 680 NEWS they heard around five shots. First responders were seen giving the victim chest compressions in front of a Starbucks. He was later pronounced dead at hospital.

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Police are currently searching for three suspects in connection with the shooting.

All three are described as white males. A preliminary description of the suspects provided by police said that one was last seen wearing a black jacket, another a baby blue jacket, and the third male was wearing a white jacket.

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Yonge Street is currently closed between Bloor and Cumberland streets as police investigate.

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One woman who declined to give her name said she's a friend of the victim. She told CBC News she saw her friend get into an altercation before the gunfire erupted. She said she administered CPR before paramedics arrived.

"There was no fight, just an argument and that was it," the woman said.

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"There were five shots fired. I'm not sure how many connected to him," she said.

The shooting took place near a Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Jack Astor's, all of which were likely busy at the time. There's also a TTC entrance within the cordoned-off area.

Another bystander, who said he was around the corner from the scene when the shooting happened, said he also heard five shots ring out.

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The victim in a brazen shooting in Yorkville on Wednesday night has been identified as an 18-year-old Toronto man.

Gabriel Nikov was fatally shot in front of two coffee shops on Yonge Street just north of Bloor Street shortly after 8 p.m.

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A 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection to the shooting death of 18-year-old Gabriel Nikov last Wednesday near Yonge and Bloor streets.

Bradley Cheveldayoff, 22, was arrested Sunday and charged with second-degree murder.

According to the victim’s friend, the incident began as an argument over money between Nikov and the suspect in front a Starbucks store near Yonge and Asquith Avenue.

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On April 13, 2016, Kelly Whetter got a text from her 18-year-old son Gabriel Nikov, saying he’d finally landed a job at a restaurant a stone’s throw away from their Little Italy apartment.

The high school student had spent that Wednesday afternoon handing out resumes after class, Whetter recalled, and had been hoping for a job at Cafe Diplomatico Restaurant & Pizzeria for weeks.

But Nikov would never show up for his first shift.

Four hours after texting his mom, Nikov was lying on the sidewalk just north of Yonge and Bloor Sts., bleeding to death after being shot in the back.
“Not in a million years did I think that would happen,” Whetter told the Star a few days before the first anniversary of her only child’s murder.


“I still don’t believe it happened.”

Nikov’s death was the 24th homicide in Toronto in 2016 — a particularly bloody year for the city — and besides sorrow and disbelief, his murder also brought confusion to his friends and family: Nikov had never strayed too far from College St., so why he was all the way out at Bloor and Yonge was a mystery. The confusion only grew when, a few days later, police arrested Bradley Cheveldayoff, then 22, and charged him with second-degree murder. Chevaldayoff is unknown to Whetter and Nikov’s friends.

Cheveldayoff’s preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin late next month.

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Gabriel Nikov's mother, Kelly Whetter, plans to hold a vigil on April 13, a year to the day that her son was gunned down at Yonge and Bloor. After her son's death, she says she has learned to channel her anger into something bigger. (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star)

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