Patricia Real, 46, was shot dead outside her Etobicoke home on Hallmark Avenue near Rimilton Avenue at about 11:10 p.m. on July 17, 2000. She had returned with her boyfriend and was in the backyard area when an assailant who appeared to have followed them on a bicycle confronted them. The gunman shot Real twice in the head at close range; emergency crews pronounced her dead at the scene. The boyfriend fought the attacker, who then escaped on the bicycle.

Investigators treated the attack as a targeted ambush. Real lived independently, was employed and not known to have been involved in criminal activity, though she had at some point been associated with people described as part of a criminal element. Attention focused on Ronald Harper, a former long-term partner whom Real had left in January 2000; police placed him at Casino Rama in Orillia at the time of the shooting and did not publicly announce charges. Harper died by suicide nearly a year later.

Did anyone in the Etobicoke area know Patricia Real, her movements that night, or details about the bicycle or a tall, thin man in a black puffy jacket and baseball cap?