Toronto police say deaths of two young children treated as suspicious

Toronto police are investigating the suspicious deaths of two boys, aged 4 and 5, who were found alone inside their apartment in the city’s east end.

Officers initially rushed to the high-rise building around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, after receiving reports about a woman – the boys’ mother – who had fallen from a sixth-floor balcony in Scarborough.

When they arrived, police said, that woman was conscious, and relayed information that sent them up to her sixth-floor unit to do a wellness check. When they burst into the locked unit, they found her two children without vital signs.

At a press conference Monday morning, Toronto Police Service Acting Inspector Terry Browne said both boys were transferred to trauma centres, but were ultimately pronounced dead. He said there was no visible trauma to the boys’ bodies, and that autopsies will be conducted later this week to determine their cause of death.

He said the boys’ mother was also taken to hospital, where she was undergoing surgery Monday. He described her condition as serious but stable, and said she is expected to survive.

Insp. Browne said he does not believe the fall was accidental, and added that they do not believe there was anyone else there at the time.

He said they were working to secure warrants to more thoroughly search the apartment. But at this point, he said the “scene presentation” has led the homicide unit to take carriage of the investigation.

No identities have been released, and no charges have been laid. He said investigators have been in touch with relatives of the family, who have been co-operative with “providing a narrative regarding this family dynamic.”

He said they have some information to suggest the boys had been seen “healthy and well” earlier that same day.

Sherry Moseley, who said she lived next door to the family, described the boys as “beautiful” brothers – two siblings who had just marked a funeral for their father days earlier.

“Their parents always held their hand,” Ms. Moseley, a 10-year resident of the apartment building, said in an interview Monday. “They were happy children. Happy parents.”

Ms. Moseley, who said she shares a wall with the neighbouring family, said the woman from the apartment next door knocked on her door for the first time early this month. She was crying and conveying that her spouse had just died suddenly, though she did not say the cause of his death, Ms. Moseley said.

Ms. Moseley said she called 911 Sunday evening after hearing a commotion in the hallway, which was the police bursting into the neighbouring family’s unit. Authorities told her to stay inside because an investigation was under way.