Canadian garbage magnate Patrick Dovigi, whose Toronto house was targeted by a gunman this week, is denying that another executive with his company was also targeted the same night, saying: “this is not the Sopranos.”
The reported billionaire, who heads Canadian environmental services company, Green For Life Environmental Inc., said a newspaper report that identified the home of Ted Manziaris, a consultant with GFL, as being shot at in the wee hours of Monday morning was inaccurate.
“It didn’t happen that night at Teddy’s house,” Dovigi said early Wednesday.
“It was nine days before.”
On Friday Sept. 20, someone threw rocks at the Manziaris home, Dovigi said.
“There wasn’t even a shooting at his house; they threw rocks through his window.”
The Toronto Police Service would not confirm Dovigi’s version of events.
“However, we can confirm that investigators believe that two firearm discharge incidents on September 29 and September 30 are connected and were targeted,” Stephanie Sayer, who speaks for the force, said in an email.
The first of those two shootings took place outside Dovigi’s home near the intersection of Mount Pleasant Road and St. Clair Avenue on Sunday at 11:52 p.m., where gunfire struck both his house and a vehicle.
The second shooting happened in the vicinity of Bayview Avenue and York Mills Road just before 1 a.m. Monday when gunfire struck the door of a house. Nobody was injured.
Dovigi has been clear that a gunman did fire multiple shots at his Rosedale home overnight Sunday. He wasn’t in the country at the time, and nobody was hit.
On Monday, Dovigi said he did not think the armed intruder knew it was his home, and questioned whether the gunman was after two Range Rovers parked in his Toronto basement.
“This has been an ongoing topic in Toronto for awhile,” Dovigi said Monday.
“It’s pretty scary that it’s happening… We’re Canadian because it’s supposed to be safe. But, I don’t know, between all these carjackings and all these break-ins on our street, it’s pretty crazy.”
On Wednesday, Dovigi said he doesn’t believe reports of the shooting at his place will affect GFL’s share price, which hovered around $53 on the Toronto Stock Exchange Wednesday.
When asked if he thought one of his competitors was trying to scare him, Dovigi said: “I’ve been in business for twenty years. Who’s going to scare me? This is not the Sopranos.”
Dovigi founded his waste-management business in 2007, following a short-lived professional hockey career when he was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in 1997.
GFL quickly grew after a series of acquisitions and in March 2020 it held its initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange, leaving it with a market value of $6.1 billion.
Canadian Business magazine has listed Dovigi’s net worth at $1.1 billion.
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