The viral video of a pickup truck accelerating through a Queen Street West storefront last Friday had Torontonians agog.
Dangerous driving, galloping police horses, close calls for pedestrians and an on-foot chase where a bystander aided the police by tripping the driver as he fled the stolen truck — the video has it all.
But the incident is not just a microcosm of the sometimes crazy streets of downtown Toronto. It was also a scary day for workers on the block of Queen West just east of Peter Street.
TorontoToday visited the scene of the crime on Thursday afternoon to talk to the people who saw it up close.
Nearly all of the glass fronting Little Burgundy, the shoe store that the pickup truck careened into, has been replaced by plywood.
A small sign written in orange marker is taped to the only remaining window, letting shoppers know “We are open.”
Little Burgundy staff were cagey. They told TorontoToday they were instructed by management not to discuss the incident with the media because a police investigation is still ongoing.
They did confirm the store’s windows were boarded up quickly and that Little Burgundy reopened for business by the following morning.
Video footage published by 6ixBuzz was recorded by either a staff member or a patron of the shoe store at the moment the pickup truck drove through the glass.
It shows merchandise flying, an individual thrown to the ground and several people scrambling to the emergency exit at the back of the store.
The driver of the truck, who was later identified by Toronto Police Services as a 33-year-old man named Jonathan Chabot Desrosiers, has been charged with a series of offences. A woman, Cedar Nicholas, 30, was also arrested at the scene and charged.
Both were out on bail at the time of the incident. The stolen vehicle had been flagged by a TPS automated licence plate reader and the cops responded by trying to block the vehicle from both directions during the busy early evening hours on Queen West.
At the Vuse vape shop next to Little Burgundy, staff were more forthcoming.
Two employees told TorontoToday they were working at the time of the crash and the vape shop welcomed shoe store workers inside to hide out after it happened.
The shoe store employees were shaken up and “traumatized,” according to a Vuse employee named Victoria.
On the bright side, Victoria said she has now made friends with one of the Little Burgundy workers her store helped shelter.
According to the Vuse employees, police entered the vape store and did a sweep in the immediate aftermath of the crash. They believe the cops were making sure none of the suspects were hiding in the back.
Everyone TorontoToday spoke to initially thought the sound of the crash was gunshots.
That includes staff at Nekonab, a collectibles store located beside Vuse and two storefronts over from Little Burgundy.
A cashier there said she and her coworker quickly locked the front door and took cover in the backroom with an eye on the security cameras. They came out when they realized things had calmed down.
Two storefronts east at Repair and Run — an e-bike and e-scooter repair shop — an employee named Elvis said he went outside after hearing the crash and saw the suspect flee the truck.
After the driver ran past him, Elvis said he pointed the cops in the right direction and shouted out identifiers of what he was wearing, including the colour of his shirt.
A few minutes after the incident, a “terrified” customer came into the e-bike shop.
According to Elvis, the man had been walking over to pick up his e-scooter when the truck slammed into the store just a few metres in front of where he stood on the sidewalk.
At the corner of Queen and Peter, a bookseller at Flying Books at Neverland recalled seeing police horses dash past.
It couldn’t be seen that well in the video, he said, but once the chase was on, the horses really started galloping.
According to Elvis, the viral crash is not the craziest thing he’s experienced since taking a job on Queen West — but it’s in the top five.
He said a recent fire near a natural gas line was scarier for him because people were sleeping on the upper floors of the building at the time. He’s also been involved in tense situations with people trying to steal e-scooters by impersonating customers.
Queen Street West “is not the craziest street,” Elvis said. “But crazy stuff happens … just to take the edge off the day.”
