Toronto Hostage Taking
 

An interesting ride to work this morning, with a hostage taking at Union Station here in Toronto - basically thats the central hub of all communter transit by rail or bus in the mornings...

Anyways link to story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...oronto_hostage

It should be interesting to see if the marksman is from my old Reserve unit (most of the ERT people are).

Holy crap!!

I know so many people that use the GO to come in everyday to work from Mississauga, Oakville and Brampton. That's just insane.

I'm glad the hostage was unharmed and that no one else was hurt.

There was a hostage situation one morning when I was in highschool. I just got off the bus to walk the rest of the way to school and a cop told me I couldn't walk along Annette St. So I had to walk even farther to get to school for my mornign swim practice.
I found out later a man had taken a woman hostage in a basement of a house there.

I don't know if anyone's heard, but the first victim, the woman who was shot is the wife of the hostage taker. I think she's still in the hospital, but according to CTV, she is going to be fine.

There was also a problem at Lansdowne Station yesterday.

I was on my home from the gym at about 7pm and at St. George station they said we all had to get off at Christie and take a shuttle bus the rest of the way.
Apparently quite a few fire engines were called to Lansdowne. Does anyone know what happened? They said it was a "medical emergency". I have a feeling someone might have jumped.

Thats usually what it is... the TTC, police and emergency service will not "announce" that there was a jumper for two reasons - media attention may encourage more, and to give the family of the deceased a measure of privacy.

Now it could also have easily been another type of health related emergency - stroke, heartattack, seizure, etc. It happens at least daily on the TTC (my uncle worked for them for over 30 years). For morbid interest sake, Jumpers average around a dozen or more a year.