10 Toronto Homicide Statistics and Trends for 2025

Toron­to has seen a 10.4% drop in major crime indi­ca­tors (MCIs) year-over-year as of Octo­ber 2025. Accord­ing to the Toron­to Police Ser­vice (TPS), prop­er­ty crime is most­ly down, includ­ing a 31.5% decrease in auto thefts and a decline in break and enter.

Mean­while, vio­lent crime rates have declined across the board, with assaults, rob­beries, sex­u­al vio­la­tions, and — most dra­mat­i­cal­ly — homi­cides decreas­ing.

At Pro­tec­tion Plus, we’ve put togeth­er the most impor­tant Toron­to homi­cide sta­tis­tics to show where progress is being made, how the cur­rent num­bers com­pare to pre­vi­ous years, and what these trends reveal about safe­ty across the city.

1. There were roughly 85 murders in Toronto in 2024, but 2025 is on pace for a near 50% drop

As of Octo­ber 2025, Toron­to had report­ed 32 mur­ders for the year, mark­ing a 56.2% decline from the 73 mur­ders record­ed dur­ing the same time peri­od in 2024. By year-end 2024, the city saw 85 homi­cides, and is pro­ject­ed to fin­ish 2025 with around 43 homi­cides.

For com­par­i­son, there were 73 homi­cides report­ed in 2023 and 71 in 2022. A sim­i­lar spike occurred in 2021, when 85 mur­ders were also report­ed.

Source: TPS

2. Toronto’s homicide rate is projected to drop to 1.3 per 100,000 residents by the end of 2025

Based on an esti­mat­ed 3.3 mil­lion res­i­dents in 2024, Toron­to stands at about 1 homi­cide per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion as of Octo­ber 2025 — less than half of the 2.21 per 100,000 report­ed at the same time last year and below the 2.58 per 100,000 seen by the end of 2024.

If Toron­to fin­ish­es 2025 with the pro­ject­ed 43 homi­cides, there will be a year-end rate of 1.3 per 100,000 res­i­dents — one of the low­est in recent years.

Source: TPS.

3. In 2025, shooting deaths fell by half and stabbing deaths dropped by one-third in Toronto

Accord­ing to Toron­to homi­cide sta­tis­tics, by Octo­ber 2025 the city had seen 17 shoot­ing deaths (52.8% decrease year-over-year), 11 stab­bing deaths (35.3% decrease), and 4 mur­ders with oth­er weapons (71.4% decrease). The pre­vi­ous year-to-date, there had been 38 shoot­ing deaths, 19 stab­bing deaths, and 16 mur­ders with oth­er weapons.

Year-end totals for 2024 includ­ed 43 shoot­ing deaths, 24 stab­bing deaths, and 18 oth­er mur­ders.

Pro­ject­ed 2025 totals (based on cur­rent pace):

• 20 shoot­ing deaths
• 16 stab­bing deaths
• 5 oth­er homi­cides

This would be the low­est in recent years, with 2023 pre­vi­ous­ly see­ing the fewest shoot­ing deaths with 29, and 2021 see­ing the fewest stab­bing deaths and oth­er homi­cides with 16 and 10, respec­tive­ly.

Source: TPS.

4. Over the past 20 years, homicides have occurred throughout Toronto, with the city centre seeing the highest concentration

Image Source

The map above indi­cates the loca­tion of every homi­cide report­ed in the city of Toron­to for over 25 years. Col­ored mark­ers reveal mur­ders from 2021 to August 2025, with yel­low mark­ers indi­cat­ing shoot­ing deaths, red mark­ers rep­re­sent­ing stab­bing deaths, and blue mark­ers indi­cat­ing oth­er mur­ders. Grey mark­ers indi­cate homi­cides report­ed from 2004 through 2020.

Source: Toron­to Police Pub­lic Safe­ty Data Por­tal.

5. Bendale-Glen Andrew, North Riverdale, and West Hill neighbourhoods are tied for the most homicides in 2025 — with 2 each

By Octo­ber 2025, each of the three Toron­to neigh­bour­hoods had two police-report­ed homi­cides, while the pre­vi­ous year West­on led with five homi­cides. So far in 2025, West­on had record­ed zero homi­cides for the year.

Toron­to homi­cide sta­tis­tics reveal that in 2023 Moss Park had the most mur­ders with sev­en, while 2022 saw a five-way tie among Alder­wood, Glen­field-Jane Heights, Lans­ing-West­gate, Moss Park, and York Uni­ver­si­ty Heights with three homi­cides each. In 2021, York Uni­ver­si­ty Heights led with six homi­cides.

Here’s the neigh­bour­hood break­down of the 32 homi­cides report­ed in Toron­to as of Octo­ber 2025:

• Annex: 1
• Ben­dale-Glen Andrew: 2
• Brookhaven-Ames­bury: 1
• Dan­forth: 1
• Engle­mount-Lawrence: 1
• Green­wood-Coxwell: 1
• Har­bourfront-City­Place: 1
• Hen­ry Farm: 1
• High Park North: 1
• Ion­view: 1
• Isling­ton: 1
• Mim­ico-Queensway: 1
• Moss Park: 1
• Mount Den­nis: 1
• Mount Olive-Sil­ver­stone-Jamestown: 1
• North Riverdale: 2
• Oak­dale-Bev­er­ley Heights: 1
• Pel­mo Park-Hum­ber­lea: 1
• Scar­bor­ough Vil­lage: 1
• Stonegate-Queensway: 1
• Tam O’Shanter-Sullivan: 1
• Uni­ver­si­ty: 1
• Welling­ton Place: 1
• West Hill: 2
• West­on-Pel­ham Park: 1
• Wood­bine-Lums­den: 1
• Wych­wood: 1
• Yonge-Bay Cor­ri­dor: 1
• York­dale-Glen Park: 1

To read where all 85 homi­cides occurred in 2024, see the Toron­to crime rate by neigh­bour­hood.

Source: TPS.

6. Ontario as a whole did not reflect Toronto’s 2024 homicide spike — the provincial total increased by only 10

In 2024, Ontario record­ed 282 homi­cides — an increase of 10 over the 272 homi­cides record­ed in 2023. How­ev­er, the 2024 total was still low­er than in 2022 (293) and 2021 (284).

Like­wise, the Ontario mur­der rate in 2024 was 1.75 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion, only slight­ly high­er than 1.74 the pre­vi­ous year and low­er than 2022 (1.94) and 2021 (1.91). This was also low­er than the nation­al mur­der rate, as Cana­da saw a total of 788 homi­cides in 2024 (the fewest since 2020) with a mur­der rate of 1.91 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion.

How­ev­er, the 2024 Ontario homi­cide rate did show a 52.67% increase com­pared to 2014, while the nation­wide homi­cide rate increased 28.82% over the decade.

Here’s how the total num­ber of homi­cides in Ontario com­pared to oth­er provinces in 2024, as well as the homi­cide rate per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion:

• Alber­ta: 98 (2.00)
• British Colum­bia: 93 (1.63)
• Man­i­to­ba: 94 (6.29)
• New Brunswick: 18 (2.11)
• New­found­land and Labrador: 4 (0.73)
• Nova Sco­tia: 25 (2.32)
• Nunavut: 4 (9.72)
• Ontario: 282 (1.75)
• Prince Edward Island: 2 (1.12)
• Que­bec: 97 (1.07)
• Saskatchewan: 65 (5.24)
• North­west Ter­ri­to­ries: 6 (13.41)
• Yukon: 0 (0.00)

Source: Sta­tis­tics Cana­da.

7. Among Canadian CMAs, Toronto consistently ranks first for homicides, with 133 in 2024

Each year, the Toron­to cen­sus met­ro­pol­i­tan area (CMA) records more homi­cides than any oth­er CMA. How­ev­er, Toron­to is the most pop­u­lous Cana­di­an CMA with over 7.1 mil­lion peo­ple, fol­lowed by Mon­tre­al (4.6 mil­lion) and Van­cou­ver (3.1 mil­lion).

Before peak­ing at 133 homi­cides in 2024, the Toron­to CMA record­ed 119 in 2023, 131 in 2022, 118 in 2021, and 103 in 2020 — vast­ly sur­pass­ing all oth­er CMAs each year.

The table below shows the 10 CMAs with the most homi­cides in 2024, as well as their esti­mat­ed pop­u­la­tions and homi­cide rates per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion:

An addi­tion­al 270 mur­ders were record­ed in non-cen­sus met­ro­pol­i­tan areas, the fewest since 2020.

• Despite hav­ing the high­est total num­ber of homi­cides, Toronto’s 2024 rate (1.9) ranks sev­enth among these CMAs.
• Win­nipeg has the high­est homi­cide rate among these CMAs at near­ly 4.6 per 100,000.
• Van­cou­ver and Mon­tre­al have the low­est, both around 1.2 per 100,000.

Source: Sta­tis­tics Cana­da.

8. Homicides tend to spike around the hottest months and September, while massive spikes can occur around the holidays

While trends since 2020 are incon­sis­tent, there appears to be an annu­al spike around Sep­tem­ber and between June and July, with some­times anoth­er dur­ing or just after the hol­i­days, either in Decem­ber (the high­est month for mur­ders in 2023, with 11) or Jan­u­ary (the high­est month for 2022, with 10).

As of Octo­ber 2025, July was the heav­i­est month for homi­cide in Toron­to for the year with six mur­ders report­ed. Five homi­cides were report­ed in both June and Sep­tem­ber, while four were report­ed in both March and August, three were report­ed in both Feb­ru­ary and April, and one was report­ed in both Jan­u­ary and May.

In 2024, June and Sep­tem­ber saw the high­est spikes, with 11 and 10 homi­cides, respec­tive­ly. The fewest homi­cides year-over-year occurred in May, July, and August, with six each. How­ev­er, the low­est months for report­ed homi­cides by year-end were Novem­ber with 4 and Decem­ber with 5 mur­ders.

Source: TPS.

9. As of October, the TPS had 3 current homicide investigations for 2025 — the lowest for any recent year

For com­par­i­son, Toron­to Police Ser­vice Homi­cide has 17 cur­rent inves­ti­ga­tions from 2024, five from 2023, 11 from 2022, 22 from 2021, and 17 from 2020.

Cur­rent homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions for 2025 include:

• A 30-year-old male homi­cide vic­tim, shot July 22 in the area of Osler Street and Dav­en­port Road.
• A 42-year-old male shot May 19 in the area of West­on Road and Albion Road.
• A man, age unknown, shot March 26 near Mar­tin Grove Road and Albion Road.

Source: TPS.

10. TPS cleared 84% of murder cases in 2022 — the highest clearance rate in 20 years

Of the 67 mur­ders Toron­to police inves­ti­gat­ed in 2022, they made 56 arrests by the end of that year.

Forty-two of these mur­ders were fatal shoot­ings, which are espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to solve, but the depart­ment was able to clear 80% of them.

A suc­cess rate this high is very rare, and an inspec­tor with the depart­ment cred­it­ed video sur­veil­lance, foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors, anony­mous tips, and inves­tiga­tive genet­ic geneal­o­gy.

Source: Glob­al News.

What These Toronto Homicide Statistics Reveal

The 2025 data paints a cau­tious­ly opti­mistic pic­ture for Toronto’s safe­ty land­scape. While fluc­tu­a­tions in Toron­to homi­cide sta­tis­tics are nor­mal year to year, the trends below high­light mean­ing­ful progress toward a safer city:

• Major decline in vio­lent crime: Homi­cides in Toron­to are pro­ject­ed to fall by near­ly 50% com­pared to 2024, mark­ing a strong improve­ment for this major Cana­di­an city.
• Record-low homi­cide rate: With a pro­ject­ed 1.3 homi­cides per 100,000 res­i­dents, Toronto’s 2025 homi­cide rate is on track to rough­ly halve the rate from the pre­vi­ous year.
• Improved inves­tiga­tive out­comes: In recent years, the Toron­to Police Ser­vice has seen the high­est clear­ance rate in two decades, thanks to mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and strong com­mu­ni­ty coop­er­a­tion.
• Geo­graph­ic shifts in vio­lence: Few­er neigh­bour­hoods are see­ing repeat homi­cides, sug­gest­ing improved com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty efforts at the local lev­el.
• Encour­ag­ing long-term trend: The over­all decline across most major crime indi­ca­tors sig­nals a poten­tial­ly sus­tained pos­i­tive shift in Toron­to crime sta­tis­tics.

How Protection Plus Can Help Protect Your Property

These Toron­to homi­cide sta­tis­tics high­light the need for strong home secu­ri­ty as well as busi­ness secu­ri­ty. Since 1994, Pro­tec­tion Plus has helped Cana­di­ans safe­guard what mat­ters most. With over 25,000 homes and busi­ness­es served, our Toron­to-based experts design and install tai­lored sys­tems — from smart alarms to access con­trol and video sur­veil­lance.

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