MARINA JIMÉNEZ AND JOE FRIESEN

From Monday's Globe and Mail

October 27, 2008 at 3:54 AM EDT

TORONTO — She was a small-town girl looking for a wider landscape. And Bailey Zaveda thought she had found it in an east-end Toronto neighbourhood filled with hip restaurants and the city's bright young things.

But her life was cut tragically short this weekend. Her family is devastated by her sudden death and cannot believe the 23-year-old was killed by a man she'd never met who pulled out a semi-automatic pistol in the doorway of a bar in Leslieville.

Ms. Zaveda was one of three people to die violently in the Toronto region over the weekend, along with a man shot dead in a luxury car in North York and a man stabbed to death in Hamilton. Ms. Zaveda happened to be standing in the doorway of the Duke of York tavern smoking a cigarette just after midnight Friday, and died when the man fired at another patron outside the bar, catching her in the line of fire.

"It's really sad she was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Cameron Deir, Ms. Zaveda's cousin, said in an interview. "She was really happy in Toronto and everything was on the right track for her. She had a boyfriend there. It's going to be really hard on her mother to lose her only daughter."

Police have issued a Canada-wide arrest warrant for second-degree murder for Kyle Weese: a 25-year-old man considered "violent and extremely dangerous" with a long criminal record. They released his photo and vowed to track him down, in a case police say is reminiscent of the death of Jane Creba, a bystander killed in a crowd of Boxing Day shoppers in 2005. Mr. Weese is under a weapons prohibition.

"Citizens should have the opportunity to move about the city without being victimized by violent offenders like Mr. Weese," Detective Sergeant Gary Giroux of the Toronto Police Service's homicide squad said yesterday at a news conference. "Miss Zaveda set out for a night of entertainment and she's not coming home."

Yesterday morning a woman out for a walk on a quiet North York street found a man shot dead behind the wheel of a luxury car.

The victim, a man who looked to be in his thirties, was found sitting in the front seat of an Infiniti M35X on Alexis Boulevard near Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue West. Shell casings were spotted inside.

"I was taking my morning walk when I came to this car where the passenger door was open," the woman said.

"I looked inside the driver's side but the window was tinted and I couldn't see anything. I didn't think anything of it and just kept on walking. When I looked back the passenger side door was still open, so I went back and looked inside the passenger side and that's when I saw the body," said the witness, who gave her name as Grace.

"His head was back, like he was sleeping. I looked at him three or four times then I got suspicious. With another man we both looked and saw two bullet cases. The other man ran into his house and called 911. The bullet cases were on the passenger seat and on the floor of the passenger side."

The man wanted for Ms. Zaveda's killing is "well known" to police, who said they will use all their resources to locate and arrest him. "The borders are flagged, the airports are flagged," Det. Sgt. Giroux said. "He's got no place to go, nowhere to hide. He is going to be caught and he should just turn himself in."

In 2005, Mr. Weese faced charges of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, possessing a dangerous weapon, careless use of a firearm and carrying a concealed weapon.

Police say the shooter also injured his target, who had turned to go back into the bar, and three other patrons. They were all treated in hospital and released.

Ms. Zaveda, who was originally from Brockville, Ont., left home at 18 in search of adventure and a big-city setting. She was a rebellious teenager and enjoyed a party, but remained close to her mother, her cousin said. "She was very independent and very popular, and would come back at Christmas and in the summer," Mr. Deir said.

In recent years, she had settled down, found a boyfriend and had begun studying communications. She worked in various jobs, including positions at both Bell and Telus, he said.

"She was a wonderful person," added her uncle in a brief phone interview from his home in Gatineau, Que.

Yesterday, two officers stood behind yellow police tape, guarding the entrance to the Duke of York, which had shards of glass on its steps, and orange blankets shielding the spot where Ms. Zaveda died. Decorated with a pastel-coloured mural of John Wayne in cowboy gear, the bar attracts a younger clientele on weekend karaoke nights, and older people during the week, said Jenny Jana, manager of a restaurant across the street. "This is usually a quiet area," she said.

A 48-year-old man killed in Hamilton over the weekend left a trail of blood that stretched several blocks after apparently being stabbed in the city's downtown. He appears to have stumbled to a rooming house at 16 Cannon St. E., where he collapsed and died. Hamilton police said an autopsy will take place today. No arrests have been made, and the victim has not yet been identified.