  Dog from God urlLink Well this just scared the pants right off of me. I'm completely pants-less with fear. A man drove from the Maritimes with a carload of guns and ammunition, vowing to kill as many people in Toronto as he could  before a last-minute encounter with a wandering dog inspired a change of heart. The New Brunswick man, in his 40s, surrendered to police yesterday afternoon in front of a supermarket at Leslie and Eastern Sts. He had a loaded gun in his pocket and a car crammed with more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition. "At that time, he decided he was going to shoot people in the area," said Detective Nick Ashley of 55 Division. "He attended a local park nearby and was preparing the weapons to do that. " By chance, a dog approached the man and started playing with him in the Victoria Park Ave. and Queen St. E. park. "He happens to be a pet lover and decided that if there was such a nice dog in the area the people were too nice and he wasn't going to carry out his plan," Ashley said. His car, a red Subaru caked with mud, provided the testament. It was packed with doggie blankets, a big plastic dog dish still filled with dry kibble - and the biggest single arsenal Ashley had seen in his 17 years with the service.
The car "was absolutely stuffed," he said. Stuffed with guns, ammunition and a self described crazy person. "He told me he was crazy and he needed to go to the hospital," the officer recalled. And, Douglas added, he had a loaded gun in his pocket. "He said, `I'm just going to drive around and kill people at random. '" Officers were tallying their cache last night at their Coxwell St. headquarters, counting carton after carton of bullets.
The list included: a 12-gauge shotgun, a bolt action rifle with a telescopic lens, a 9-mm semiautomatic, a machete, throwing knife, camouflage ski mask, black leather gloves, and 6,296 rounds of ammunition. "He felt that if he shot enough people he would stay in custody permanently," Ashley said. "This could have been a very dangerous situation had his plan unfolded.
" "It's scary how close it could have been. We have a dog to thank somewhere. " Thank Dog that dog was there. You know, I don't mean to get up on a soap-box here but, this really underscores the need for more.... I mean, it's obvious that something like this is going to happen when funding gets cut from... Clearly we should be putting more time and political effort into... Yeah. I don't know either. I mean...was this guy forcibly discharged from a maritime mental hospital, screaming about how he's going to drive to Toronto and kill a bunch of people? Were all of his guns registered with the Feds, and if so was there some indication in the database that he'd do something like this? There's an inevitability to an incident like the one we narrowly avoided. How on earth do you stop something like this before it happens? There's been mass shootings in the States that we look down our noses at (you know...because they have GUNS down there) and this one was going to rival any of those.
San Diego McDonalds, New York Subway, Virginia Beltway, Toronto Beaches. How do you prevent someone unbalanced from inflicting terror on the rest of us? I've got a prize for the first letter to the editor claiming that the details of this story are proof that owners should be allowed to let their dogs run without leashes in Toronto parks. I've got another prize for the first letter to the editor who mentions that the dog was actually an angel, or perhaps Zeus, transformed to save us all. As grateful as I am for that dog, a mercifully benign coincidence is still a coincidence. Good boy. Come get your treat. 
