Associated Press
Police have been looking for armed suspects since the carjackings started Friday and stretched through the weekend.
The victims were forced into their cars at gunpoint, blindfolded, made to withdraw money at bank machines and, in some cases, assaulted.
The first one occurred at a waterfront sports club where a couple was held at gunpoint in the parking lot before their vehicle was stolen.
Two female victims were stripped and left locked in a portable toilet at a deserted train station many kilometres away from where they were carjacked.
In an odd twist, two other victims were reportedly released in deserted areas of the city after their attackers gave them cash for cab rides home.
Another incident occurred in broad daylight Saturday, when a woman was hit by a hammer-wielding man as she got out of her car at a suburban shopping mall. The man sped away in her car.
The incidents all involved two or more suspects attacking two victims. The stolen cars were all expensive and run the gamut from a Nissan Maxima, a Lexus, a Toyota 4 Runner, a Toyota Camry and a GMC Yukon.
In the hijacking early Monday morning, two cars were commandeered at the same time and their drivers ordered to drive to bank machines.
The news was enough to frighten downtown Toronto residents, many of whom are accustomed to such American-style crimes being played out in some of the city’s outlying, lower-income suburbs.
“It did scare me that right outside my apartment building there were guys with guns,” Jayne Richards, 29, said Monday.
“The thing that scares me is that we never really had to worry about this before but now obviously we do.”