It's become a tale all too familiar to GTA residents -- innocent bystanders caught in the line of fire for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now, a team of Sheridan College students are taking the city's stray bullet shootings to the big screen.

Based on a true story, Stray follows two 16-year-old boys who make violent choices and end up accidently shooting an innocent father inside his home.

Producer Christopher Giroux, who pitched the film idea, says he came up with the concept after his father became involved in a stray bullet murder investigation. Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux was the lead homicide detective in the killing of Scarborough father Derek Wah Yan in his bedroom in 2003.

Yan, 40, was killed by a bullet that went through a wall of his home and hit him in the chest, while he was watching television with his youngest son. The stray bullet came from a gang dispute on the streets outside his house.

"This story always cuts me. It affects us all, no one is safe," Giroux says.

"We have changed a few details of the story, but it's always touched me how a stray bullet can affect the lives of so many people."

Giroux, 21, says he also used details from the recent shooting at the Duke of York Tavern, where innocent bystander Bailey Zaveda was shot to death in October.

"When we were writing the film in November we pulled a lot from the Duke of York shooting -- the killer was meant to shoot another person, but missed and killed a young woman. So it's a combination of the two stories." he says.

Director Fraser Mills, 23, says the ten-minute long film touches on a lot of topical subjects in Toronto, with writer Jake Barker incorporating the Tamil Tigers into the script.

"It's a tale that intertwines the life of one street teen, two urban youths and a family that's come to Toronto to escape the violence in Sri Lanka only to get entangled in this web. They're all linked by this one stray bullet," he says. Some scenes in the film are only in Tamil.

Mills says the team tried to stay as true as they could to the original shootings and were given access to the case files by Toronto police.

"Visually I tried to use as many images as possible that were part of the original case files and for locations we looked at a lot of the areas but Regent Park seemed like the best place."

"It's one of those housing developments that never really worked out," he says. "It's such a place that's synonymous with multi-culturism and people doing their best just to get by."

The film was shot over four days in February in Regent Park, near the DVP and Dundas Street East with a cast and crew of more than 30 people.

Mississauga native Mills says he tried to bring realism to the screen to bring viewers' focus to the issues.

"I think people should really watch for the moment where the father realizes what's happened. If all goes well everybody will cry," he says.

"I don't think it's very often you get to tell a story like this."

The trio -- in their final year at Sheridan College's post-graduate Advanced Film and Television program -- has high expectations for the film, which they're hoping to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"We want to invoke a positive response, because this is a very topical issue in the city right now," Giroux says.

"When we were in pre-production, stray bullet shootings were still happening in Toronto. This film makes powerful statements about the recent increase in gun violence in this city."

The post-production of the film is expected to wrap up by April 10.

Stray will premiere in downtown Toronto in May.